


all roads lead to

by tremontaine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Anastasia Fusion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Animal Transformation, F/M, Sex Pollen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-06-03 11:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 28,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6608539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tremontaine/pseuds/tremontaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of Natasha/Bucky ficlets for different tropes or prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_animal transformation_

“Don’t pout,” Natasha said. “You’re beautiful.”

Predictably, that made James preen. His tail lashed, and he crossed his great front paws where they hung off the side of the examining table and put his head on them, watching her intently. His mane shone under the lamps, black as night and so soft she wanted to curl up beside him and bury her face in it.

“It’s unusual,” said Thor.

“But he’ll be all right?”

“Of course. You just have to find the trigger that releases the spell.”

Natasha thought about it. “True love’s kiss?”

Thor shrugged.

She looked at James sideways. “It’s not Steve, is it?”

He pushed himself up on the table, rose to his full height, and turned his back to her – rather in disgust, she thought. It made her laugh.

“Come back here.” But he wouldn’t, so she stood up instead and walked around the table.

“Hill? Sharon? Wanda?”

The bright blue eyes that alone had remained unchanged about him narrowed. Her heart turned over in her chest. “Tony? Sam? Thor?”

“Flattered,” said Thor cheerfully, “but if mutuality is required then I’m afraid not.”

Natasha ignored him. She was fighting back a smile, her breathing a little unsteady; her chest was hollow and her mouth dry. “Clint? Laura? Clint and Laura?”

The great head shook in exasperation, but he knew her, her Soldier, he knew her, he always had.

“Me?” Very quietly, but she heard Thor take several steps back, giving them privacy. The lion lay quiescent before her; she reached out with trembling hands and buried them in that beautiful mane, warm and a little rough, her breathing unsteady as she leaned in, and her lips brushed his face between his eyes.

The world went a little blurry. She was – on the floor, and – James was beside her, above her, the strong body surrounding her, keeping her safe and warm. Natasha breathed unsteadily, long shaky breaths, and he nuzzled her gently, possessive, comforting.

After a moment, she heard Thor say, “Ah.” A moment after that, she realised she had paws.

“Well,” said Thor, “you… make a very handsome couple. Uh, I think perhaps I had better call Steve. And Clint.”

 

+++

 

_sex pollen_

Natasha had been sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her legs for who knew how many hours. Her face was blank, her body motionless; Nick was sure she’d not eaten or drank anything.

“And Barnes?” he said, turning to the other observation window: Helen raised the screen for him. Barnes was moving, pacing; you see, through the thin scrubs, the state he was in, but he didn’t seem to notice it much, didn’t seem clumsy or uncomfortable. If anything, he was sleek and quick and dangerous as hell. As Nick watched, he stopped at last, facing the wall, his hands pressed flat to it before – quicker than the eye could follow – he punched it, the concrete cracking, blood on his knuckles. For a moment he stared at it blankly, the fingertips of his left hand digging into the wall. Then he straightened, shivering, and walked back to the little table, and sat down, breathing hard.

Natasha still hadn’t moved.

Nick said quietly, “What’s the verdict?”

“Bluntly,” said Helen, “this is killing them.” She spoke calmly, but the anxiety was in her face and body language. “From the records we salvaged in that HYDRA base, they’re going to become increasingly single-minded – hunger, thirst, need for sleep, just unimportant. Until, finally, one of those things, likely thirst, will kill them.”

“Christ.” Nick dragged a chair out and sat down heavily.

“Given that Barnes has the serum, he’ll last longer. It won’t be a pleasant way to die, Nick.”

“So we go find them someone to have sex with them.”

“Given that Barnes has the serum, there’s a decent chance he could – harm – his partner. Natasha too, though hopefully less of a one. And besides which, there’s this.”

She held out a tablet to him with a video of Natasha’s room – she’d still been coherent, sitting at the table, talking to Helen.

“So if there’s anyone you want,” Helen said in the vid.

“Only my Soldier,” Natasha said in Russian. Her face was turned away from the camera, her hands lax on the table, as if she’d given up.

“I’m sorry?”

You could see her pulling herself together. “I’m sorry. No.”

Helen swallowed. “Do you know if Barnes –”

Natasha’s head came up, and suddenly, in that vid, Nick saw the same sleek grace that he’d seen in Barnes just now. “Helen,” she said, and her voice was silken soft and low, “if you let some random stranger you picked out of a line up in the mess hall put their hands on him I’ll slit your throat.” She leaned forwards; she was almost climbing over the table. “Do you understand me? I’ll kill you if you let that happen to him. I’ll kill you.”

Helen took the tablet off him and stopped playback. “She – well, she’s been like this since shortly after that.”

“Are you telling me you want me to let them fuck each other?” said Nick. “Because I really don’t think –”

“I think,” said Helen, “if you don’t, they’re both –”

Going to die. But a sudden noise cut her off, and then Barnes said, “Helen?”

His voice was raspy, and when he heard it he fumbled for the water bottle on the table, took a few glugs.

“I’m here,” Helen said.

“How bad?”

“Getting worse,” she said, when Nick nodded at her. No point lying to the man.

For a few seconds he was quiet. He didn’t look up at the window; he was playing with the water bottle, turning it over and over in his hands. “Romanov?” he asked at last.

“The same.”

That sent a shudder through him. “Let me see her.”

“No,” said Nick. God alone knew what they’d do to each other in this state.

“If you let her die I’ll kill you,” Barnes said calmly. Now he looked up, sharply, his eyes bright and feverish, and though the obs windows were set to one-way, so that all the man could see was his own reflection, Nick had an uncanny feeling that he knew exactly where he and Helen were standing. “If she’s hurt, I’ll kill you.”

Nick took a step back from the window, thoughtfully. “Not _that_ single-minded.”

“They’re not totally irrational,” said Helen. “They just… don’t seem to care about anything, even their own bodily needs, except for sex. That’s the first drink Barnes has taken in about four hours and he only did it because his throat hurt when he spoke. Soon he won’t even notice that.”

Nick nodded slowly. “But they’re – fixated on each other?”

“I think they’re dating.”

“So we let them fuck each other,” he said again, but it wasn’t really a question this time.

Helen nodded slowly. Well, so be it. Nick took a breath. If this turned out to be a disaster – if Barnes and Natasha – if he was essentially letting them rape each other, he’d take that blame, and whatever Rogers and Barton chose to dole out to him for it as well. The important thing was that they survived. He reached for the comm again, but Barnes wasn’t at the table – for a few precious seconds Nick stared like a green recruit with fluff for brains – there was a sudden crash, the lights flickered, and Barnes – was gone. The door hung off its hinges and the guard was unconscious on the threshold, the light switch ripped from the wall, and Nick dived for the lock to Natasha’s obs room, but too late: there was another crash, and then that door swung open too.

Nick froze up. Not irrational?! If he sent anyone in they’d die, he didn’t need Helen to tell him that, where the fuck were Rogers and Barton, what was taking them so long to get back here. He snapped the comm on and said, “Romanov!”

Natasha raised her head just as Barnes stepped inside: he was unarmed, but he was moving towards her with deliberate purpose, his eyes a little wild. A little.

“Romanov, listen,” said Nick, but before he got farther than that she was on her feet.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said in Russian, “they’ll kill you, they’ll kill you,” and that was just – that made no sense. What was going on?

Barnes answered her in Russian, but though Nick knew he was fluent he spoke as if it was a struggle to recall the words, the way the sentences should be structured. “Sweetheart, it’s not them. It isn’t, I know – it keeps slipping away, all I can think about is you, but it’s not them. You’re sick, we both are.”

“God!” she said. “I won’t lose you again, I won’t, I won’t,” and he was coming towards her, crowding her up against the wall, her hands on his face from what Nick could tell.

“You have me, you’ve always had me.” Soft, crooning nonsense reassurances. God. They had told Barnes that Romanov was in a bad way, and he’d – because he was afraid for her. Not irrational, not yet. Single-minded, abrupt, impatient, but not irrational. Madden and Garland probably weren’t dead, then.

“They’re watching,” she said angrily, “I _won’t_ , this is ours, no one else gets it,” and Nick thought she was crying a little when Barnes kissed her, and, look, you didn’t have to be – romantically minded – to call it melting into each other, what they were doing. When she spoke again her voice was a whisper, his head bent to kiss her neck. “Shut the door – lock it – no one comes in here, no one takes you away from me again.”

Barnes muttered something Nick tried not to hear, and then they were stumbling towards the narrow bunk in the corner, and – OK – no – no one needed to see that, God. Nick turned his back. After a moment, he remembered to shut the comm off.

Helen was blushing red as sunset, but she was also clearly kind of amused, unwillingly.

“They’ll be so embarrassed in the morning,” she said.

If they were still alive in the morning. Nick grimaced. “Hah. All right. Lockdown, privacy, put some food and water outside the door. We’ll check, periodically – how long will it last?”

“No idea,” said Helen. “But they’ll exhaust themselves in a few hours, I should think.” She thought about it. “Twelve or thirteen at the most.”

“Twelve or – god.” Nick sighed, putting disgust into it to hide his worry. “Why did I ever want this job.”

Helen gave him a look that suggested he wasn’t fooling her.

+++

James barely had to put his mouth her before she was coming, shaking, jerking up away from the mattress, her hands tight in his hair, near to crying with the relief of his touch, his nearness. Dizzy, she thought his body heat enveloped her, made her warmer than she’d been in hours, since they’d come back here, since she’d been put in here, and all she wanted to do was lie in his arms and never, ever leave. She was trembling, gasping, when he sat up again, his face wet, the discarded panties had been soaked, her scrub pants not much better, and he crawled up her body – she was so tired, everything ached, she could barely see straight.

“Sweetheart,” he said. “Darling, angel, heart’s delight.”

Tiredly she laughed, forcing herself to wrap her arms around his neck. “Inside me,” she said, too wrung out for English, “please, it hurts, James, nothing else matters,” and he reached down to guide himself in; she cried out, her hips lifting a little to meet him, but she was exhausted, her mind spinning, and he kissed and kissed her open mouth and murmured, “Let me take care of you, Natalia, let me love you,” and proceeded to do exactly that.

+++

Natasha woke from a sleep as sweet as any she’d ever known to find herself half-crushed into the mattress by her boyfriend’s heavy body. It was lovely to be so surrounded by him, their bodies pressed tight together, but she needed to breathe, too. She pushed at his shoulder, laughing, and only then realised he was still inside her, hard and hot and ready. Awareness of that made her aware in turn that she was still turned on beyond _belief_.

“Oh! Oh god.”

“You dozed off,” he said, and kissed her chin. “Was I boring you?”

“Do you ever?” She bit her lip, laughing up into his face. “How long did I sleep?”

“I think maybe an hour. I slept too.”

She wrapped her arms around him, her hands splayed on his back. There was a fine tremor running through his muscles, and oh she ached for him to move, for friction and heat and the dizzy climb to pleasure…“Well?”

“Feeling better?” He licked his lips, his eyes narrowing, and just looking at his mouth made her unsteady.

“Oh yes. Everything had gone hazy.” Natasha nuzzled at his shoulder, the crook of his neck. “Standing up nearly made me pass out. I couldn’t breathe without you.” _I don’t know how I ever really did_.

“I was worried you’d be even worse than me, without the serum.” James kissed her. “Tasha, I’m sorry, but I have _got_ to fuck you now.” His voice sounded strained, and he planted his hands at either side of her head on the mattress and shifted to get some leverage, making her moan at the movement of his cock inside her.

“God, yes, now. Don’t ever leave me.”

“Never,” he promised. “Never.”

+++

After the second time everything began to blur, a single long continuous haze of pleasure. Refractory periods no longer existed; once or twice they dozed, but besides those short respites they were constantly fucking, entirely unable to stop. Anything more strenuous than rolling around in the narrow bunk was eschewed as being likely to kill them both. The more orgasms they teased out of each other the more aware they became that they were both exhausted, hungry, probably dehydrated and almost certainly beginning to chafe, but neither of them was prepared to do anything about any of those things, not yet, not yet. Whatever drug they’d been exposed to was burning through them still, and not to touch was agony.

Eventually even James could barely move, and they lay tangled together, his fingers on her clit, hers tucked inside him to tease his prostate, content to wait to fall asleep, or for the whole thing to be over: whichever came first.

“How long do you think it’s been?” James rubbed his nose against hers, his eyes half-closed.

“I don’t know,” Natasha murmured. “Hours. Days. How many times did you go down on me?”

“Four. Counting the slightly awkward 69-ing.”

“It’s your own fault for being tall.” She grinned at him.

“Hah,” he said, and kissed her; when he drew back he grimaced a bit. “You need to brush your teeth.”

“So do you. I don’t know if I’m getting hungrier or if it’s just that I care that I’m hungry now.”

“Yeah.” He sighed, shifting; the movement sent little sparks of pleasure up her spine, and Natasha sighed too, rubbed gently at his prostate in retaliation. She smiled when his eyes fluttered shut, his mouth a little open.

“You OK?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m with you.”

She kissed him sweetly, and time drifted on, unimportant.

+++

They slept, at some point, and finally he’d grown soft and slipped out of her. The first thing Bucky was really aware of when he woke was that they were both unpleasantly filthy. The second thing he was aware of was that someone was standing over the bunk.

Tasha lay between his body and the wall, tucked against his side, her head on his shoulder; he pushed her off and got himself into a position that hid her body from the rest of the room, groping under the pillow for a knife that wasn’t there, because they weren’t at home in their own bed.

“Barnes,” said the man, and almost as he did so the panic went down, because it was Nick, of course.

“Hell,” Bucky said, and dropped back to the mattress.

“Should have made more noise,” said Nick, in lieu of an apology. “How’s Romanov?”

“Asleep,” Natasha said, her voice muffled in the pillows. “Can I get some water?”

“On the table,” said Nick. “Food as well. And then you’re having a _thorough_ medical examination and we’re never talking about this again.”

“Suits me fine,” said Bucky, rubbing a hand over his face. “You didn’t tell Steve, did you?”

Nick snorted. Then he said, “By the way, how long have you been dating?” as if innocently curious.

Nat eyed him suspiciously. Then she said, “Nine years, give or take. Now get out, please, I’m naked,” and grinned in triumph when Nick squawked, “Nine _what_!”

 

+++ 

 

_anastasia au (kind of)_

“You’re not happy,” Alexandra said. “Dearest, I understand that you have been through a great deal, but – ”

“You don’t,” Natasha said, dropping her book with the first flash of temper she had shown since Alexandra had opened the door to her hospital room and laid eyes on her granddaughter for the first time in twelve years. “You don’t, grand-mère. You’ve never been – you’ve never had to –”

But she stopped herself. Alexandra could see the way she stopped and swallowed it down and re-arranged her face to that blank, impersonally friendly mask she’d worn constantly in the weeks since her release. It was the most painful sight the Countess had ever seen: her beloved youngest grandchild, always full of life and laughter, hemming herself in like this.

“You won’t speak to Sasha even.”

Natasha smiled a dull, lifeless smile. “It’s very good of Alexei to be so kind to me.”

“He loves you.”

“As I said, he’s very kind.” Toneless – hopeless. Alexandra closed her eyes against it. For long moments they sat in silence in the sunshine, listening to the birds, the deceptive peace in the air. Tonight the bombing would begin again, only a few hours in the future, and more people would die. London was battered into rubble but not yet on its knees. Much like her granddaughter, Alexandra thought; or desperately hoped.

“Which of them is it?” she asked softly.

Natasha looked at her. Her eyes were very wide and bright in her bloodless face.

“The Captain?” No. Too obvious. Natasha didn’t twitch. Alexandra cast her mind back to the grimy, weary, bloodied but smiling group of men she had met at the military hospital who had been sent to bring her granddaughter back from Hell. Captain Rogers, impeccably polite in that earnest American way; Lord James Falsworth, impeccably proper; the Frenchman, the – the Sergeant, who had bowed over the hand she had offered him as the others had, a tightness around his eyes and a bitter little smile she had taken as dislike. “The Sergeant. Sergeant – Barnes?”

Natasha blinked. There was something terrible in her eyes, her face: fear, and hope, and the desperate attempt to squash both. Alexandra trembled. Did she think – how could she ever think –? Because everything else had been beaten out of her. Honesty. She had to be honest. Blunt too, or Natasha would never believe her. “Natasha,” she said, struggling to keep her voice clear and calm. “I want to see you happy, child. No one will force you into the marriage with Alexei. He loves you, but Irina and Olga made those plans when you were children, and they were never more than fond wishes. If this is no longer what you want…” _If I am no longer what you want_. “Natasha, you’re free to go wherever you want, anywhere at all, even – even away from me. You don’t have to stay here for a minute longer than you wish to. You’re twenty-five; you have money; you can leave whenever you wish, and do whatever you want –”

But that horrified her. “Grand-mère, don’t, _don’t_ , I love you.” Natasha flung herself across the space between them into Alexandra’s lap the way she had done as a child, scattering teacups and the rug Babette had tucked over her legs, panicked the way she’d used to be after a nightmare. “I’m sorry, grand-mère, I’m so sorry, I never wanted to make you think – I couldn’t leave you again –” And here it was: the dam burst at last and the flood came through, and Alexandra sat and rocked the girl in her arms as the grief and poison of more than a decade’s captivity and five years of war came out in a torrent. There was no final healing here, but there was a start, and that was all that mattered.

Finally, when her sobs had died down, Alexandra kissed her hair. “What do you want?”

Silence. How long since someone had asked her that? How long since anyone had cared? Barnes cared, surely. She had read his file, with all the others, when Colonel Philips had suggested his men for the job. A good man, on paper – a grocer’s son – three younger sisters – accountancy courses – intelligent and loyal and brave, all three to a fault.

“I want to work,” Natasha said at last. “I’m not an invalid. I’m the Black Widow.” It turned Alexandra’s stomach to hear her give herself the title Karpov had forced on her, but she neither moved nor spoke. “I can help; I can do good. I can take these skills and do good… Grand-mère, I’m better trained than any agent the British have, but here poor Jenkins does everything I need before I know I need it, and Alexei pats me on the head and calls me brave, like a spoilt, runaway lapdog that’s come back after a night on the street. _I can help_.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I want James.” A whisper, as if afraid to admit it.

Alexandra stroked her hair. “Then you had better go and take him. And the job. I don’t wish to see you waste away – I only ever wanted you protected, as I could not protect Irina, or your siblings,” and now it was her turn to cry, and Natasha’s to hold her, until they both started laughing at one another, weeping like fools on the terrace in the open air in the middle of the day; Jenkins would be scandalised if he came out here and found them like this. Dear man. When Natasha had left in a flurry to run to the War Office and demand a job of Colonel Philips, and to chase down her young man, Alexandra went into the sitting room and spoke to Babette and they both had another decent bout of weeping over that cherished little girl who had grown so hard, and yet stayed herself.

That evening Natasha came home for dinner flushed with joy, her eyes sparkling and her thin hands wrapped very firmly around the wrist of her prize. Barnes was nervous, poor boy, but he faced Alexandra and Babette squarely. In the background, Jenkins hovered impressively.

“Ma’am,” Barnes said, “you don’t know anything about me, though I guess you can tell I don’t have anything to give Natasha – no, Red, let me finish. Not even a ring. My father’s a grocer; I’m an accountant, in theory.” He smiled faintly. “We’re a little on the Catholic side. But I love her, and she says you don’t mind” – “I said you _approved_ ,” Natasha broke in – “but I wanted to tell you myself that I’d die before I hurt her.” Then, suddenly, a look passed across his face as if he were laughing at himself, and all of a sudden Alexandra adored him. “And I’m making a melodramatic ass of myself that Steve’ll never let me hear the end of. Or Tasha, probably. But I love her and I’d be glad to have your blessing.”

Alexandra laughed. “And if you didn’t?”

He grinned at her. “Marry her anyway. Can hardly jilt her after she asked me in front of half the Dog and Whistle” – “ _James_!” – “ _and_ swore blind to Steve she’d look after me always,” but Alexandra was laughing, properly laughing, for the first time in what felt like years. Natasha buried her flaming face in her hands, and Barnes caught her wrists and pulled her close and kissed her on both cheeks and then her forehead, and she hid her face in his chest and clung to him, his arms tight around her. From what Alexandra could see of his face, he looked utterly at peace.

“The Veuve Clicquot, madam?” Jenkins said.

“Yes please, Jenkins,” said Alexandra, smiling, and pretended politely not to notice that his eyes were wet.

 

+++

 

_undercover in the mob_

“And would you like to sample the merchandise?” Callahan asked. He didn’t leer, as most would have: he sounded as if he were offering Jim a taste of a new kind of cupcake he’d baked, instead of the chance to rape trafficked and enslaved women and boys.

Jim leaned back in his chair, swirling the wine in his glass thoughtfully. “That… depends on the merchandise,” he said, and let his eyes flicker over Callahan’s pretty secretary.

For a moment the room was quiet. Then she looked up from her laptop, and fixed him with a look that made him want to get on his knees and spread those shapely legs of hers. He was careful not to smile.

“I don’t… usually ask that of Natalie,” said Callahan delicately.

“But I am.”

Natalie pursed her lips. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”

Jim laughed. “I’d like to take you to dinner, ma’am,” he said politely, “and look at that pretty face while I eat, and then I’d like to take you to bed. It’s a request, nothing more.”

She looked at him, her laptop balanced on her knee, her white blouse glowing in the golden lamplight, her hair curling over her ears and at her neck. She was lovely: not prim, but restrained, careful, her lush mouth controlled, her curves neatly hidden, unobtrusive. God, but she’d be beautiful in the sack, voluptuous, sensual. He could see it already, and he let her see that he could, feeling her cool gaze on him like a touch as she catalogued his body, the tailored suit that showed it off to best advantage, the strength in his thighs and chest and shoulders and hands. Nothing obvious, like spreading his knees, but he was more than confident in his ability to satisfy her, and he was fairly sure it came across.

But Callahan was not the type of man to understand the distinction between request and command, and when she glanced at him he raised a hand in – acquiescence, or an order to comply; probably he couldn’t tell the difference there, either. Either way, Jim got what he wanted. He usually did, these days.

The restaurant was quiet, small, private. They talked of inconsequential things for most of the meal: books, the weather, her love of New York, his recent trip to Istanbul. Finally, over coffee, she leaned across the table a little, her fingers on the rim of her cup.

“Are you ever going to get around to offering me that job?”

Jim laughed out loud. “You’re an impatient little kitten.”

“Oh, forgive me. Is sleeping with you an essential part of the interview process?” But she was smiling, and her eyes lingered on his hands, the open collar of his shirt, his mouth.

“Depends on the job,” he said, leaning forwards to meet her, elbows on the table. “I’m careful about my business partners, Natalie, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Callahan’s revenues have gone up and his… troubles with, shall we say, certain organisations, have gone down since you joined him. He’s an old man, or getting that way. He’s been teetering on the brink for years, and habit’s about the only thing keeping him upright and others off his back. Habit, and you. This… beginning of a beautiful friendship is an investment in my future.” He gestured between them, watched her eyes follow his fingers. Was that what she liked? Lay her down and spread her out and make her wild for it with his hands. Jim could do that, no problem.

“And I suppose you pay better than he does, or tell yourself you do.” She chuckled. “What price loyalty?”

Jim took a sip of his wine and set the glass down by his coffee cup with a soft noise. “Three hours ago he sold you to me for nothing.”

Her glorious eyes widened.

“Come on,” Jim said gently. “You know it. I know it. The deal is done, the money’s transferred, the business is underway. He gave you to me like the complimentary chocolates” – he pointed at the bowl next to the little reception desk by the restaurant door – “sitting over there. What would happen to the deal if you turned me down? Nothing. I’ve sunk too much into it to back out now. He knows it. You know it, too. Is that loyalty?”

She looked away. When they had been in the car on the way over here she’d carefully taken the clips out of her hair and twisted it into a loose rope at the back of her neck; now it was hanging over her shoulder, a beautiful riot of curls he wanted to sink his hands into, wrap around his fingers as she sucked him. “And knowing that I’ve broken with Callahan like that, would you trust me? Ever?”

Jim reached out and took her hand in his. Natalie looked back at him, solemn, searching his face for long seconds before she dropped her eyes to their hands, and Jim traced the lines of her palm with his fingertips, gentle, slow, soothing her.

“Depends on the job,” he said again. God, he wanted her in his arms, wanted to kiss that soft mouth till it smiled for him. Careful. Careful.

She drew a breath. “Meaning?”

“Come home with me,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Come to bed with me. Let me show you just how good we’d be together, you and I.”

Her fingers clenched, and she tried to pull back. “How long have you been watching me?”

“Long enough to know what I want. Don’t be so afraid.” Intelligence, guile, ruthlessness, pragmatism; dry wit and stoicism. Jim knew exactly what he wanted. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the heel of it, smelling her perfume on her skin, the leather of her wristwatch. “I don’t want acquiescence. I want – want.”

She laughed. “Both those things are a surrender.”

“If you want mine, you have it.”

Natalie shivered, and he knew he nearly had her. Callahan was the biggest idiot in existence, and so was every other man who’d ever let her walk away from him.

“Again,” she said softly. “Would you trust me?”

“If you trust me,” he said, “I will.”

She sat back in her chair, pulling her hand out of his. “Then you’re not very smart.” Her voice was clipped and sure and confident now, but her face broke into a smile as she spoke, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

“No?”

“Not smart at all. But very beautiful, and very good at what you think you’re doing.” He watched her mouth as she sipped her wine, watched her fingers on the glass, imagining them – disassembling a gun; stroking his cock. “The truth is, I’ve been watching you too. And I made sure that when this deal was brokered you heard my name every time you turned around.”

He started to laugh, trying to keep quiet, but utterly delighted. “Oh, I do have good taste. Are you ever going to get around to offering me that job?”

Natalie smiled. “You’re an impatient little kitten.”

“So why me?”

“Fishing for compliments?”

“Yes,” he said. “They’ll mean something, from you.”

Red dusted her cheekbones, but she met his eyes without embarrassment or hesitation. “You’re right about Callahan. Mostly he stays where he is because nobody can be bothered to oust him – there are more pressing problems; that mess up in Hell’s Kitchen, say. And because people respect him. He deals with you fairly, in his own way. But the organisation is outdated and outmoded and vulnerable, to the right people. And you’re the new boy: the unknown factor, the joker in the deck. I like that.” _I like you_. He didn’t need her to say it. “You’re smart and you’re pragmatic and you don’t waste your time on petty nonsense. You treat this business _like_ a business. That’s what I want in a partner.”

He nodded, slowly. “And the other?” Either would be good. Both would be better.

She pursed her lips and sipped more wine before she spoke again. “I wasn’t expecting the, uh, the personal… aspect of your offer.”

Jim sat forwards again. “But you want it.”

She snorted. “You’re very vain.”

“I know what I want.”

“A permanent partnership?”

“Yes,” he said. She looked… not surprised exactly, but still a little thrown.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” she repeated, softly again now. Her face had softened too, wondering, as if she were looking at him for the first time.

When he held his hand out to her she took it.

Back at his place it was a game to make a show of it in front of the big windows in the living room, the kitchen. He took her coat from her and offered her drinks. She sat on the couch and slipped her shoes off while he watched, and smiled at him when he came to sit on the coffee table opposite her. They talked a little, empty chat, mostly to draw out the sweet anticipation that had begun to build between them in the car. It was rising now to a fever pitch close to agony. Her eyes were very dark and very large, fixed on him hungrily, as if she could sate herself by looking at him alone, as if she’d learnt to make do with such scraps... Well, regardless of could, Jim was going to make sure she didn’t need to. How long had she been alone? How long had he been alone, come to that.

No more. Finally he put his empty glass down and stood. He could practically hear Callahan’s cameras going off on the roof opposite when he offered her his hand again. This time she squeezed his fingers when she took it, rising to her feet – short without her heels; it made him smile. She touched his face with her free hand, and then she turned her face up and leaned up on her tiptoes. He caught her to him, slowly but firmly, his arm tight across her back, and bent to take what was his.

For the first few seconds she was sweet but passive, letting him take the lead: letting him expose himself, the way he had in the restaurant. God, but he adored that about her – that patience, the guile it took to watch someone twist the rope and hang themselves and then take advantage of it. Then she stepped closer and answered him, passion rising, all fire and want, now she’d decided to have him, and if it weren’t for the cameras he’d have dropped on the couch for her to take him there and then.

But there were the cameras, so when the kiss broke he drew back and led her, step by step, across the apartment into his bedroom, watching her solemn mouth, the joy in her eyes. In the darkened bedroom, finally, hidden under the covers, Jim and Natalie, those charming but fictitious constructs, were wiped away, and Bucky and Natasha made love again and again, till all the months of undercover work were entirely put behind them, and they lay still and exhausted in one another’s arms and slept.

In the morning the news was full of Callahan’s arrest: driven into a corner by Natalie’s supposed betrayal, he’d finally made the wrong move they’d been waiting for, and at last the DA’s office had all the admissible evidence they could possibly want. Bucky and Natasha celebrated with champagne for breakfast, and more lovemaking.

“I wonder if they’d make it,” Natasha said thoughtfully, stroking her hand through his hair. God that felt good. Bucky closed his eyes, sighing; after all this time apart, it was lovely to touch again as much as they wanted.

“Who?”

“Jim and Natalie. If they’d kill each other, or be deliriously happy criminal masterminds.”

“I pick door number two,” Bucky said, and yawned hugely. “Sorry.”

“Busy night.” She was smiling. “We’d be good criminal masterminds.”

“Disturbing but true.”

“Disturbingly hot,” she said, with a sudden laugh. “I nearly melted into the floor in that restaurant.”

He grinned. Playing with her hand like that had been dirty pool indeed. “I kept waiting for you to start playing footsie with me.”

“If the tablecloths had been longer I would have.” She sounded disgruntled, which meant he had to kiss her, and – well, if Steve needed them, he was smart enough to work out where they were and decide he didn’t, at least until tomorrow morning.

 

+++

 

_fake married_

Somewhere near, a church bell was ringing half past one in the morning. The streetlights were still on, spilling warm golden light over the cobblestones, and though a car went past every now and again the city was very quiet indeed, save for the sound of their footsteps. It was a warm night, and James had flung his jacket over his shoulder. Natasha was leaning on him as they walked, her arm linked comfortably with his. When she brought her left hand up to hold his arm as well the diamond on her finger sparkled in the light distractingly, always at the edge of her vision. The fourth time she looked down at it by instinct James laughed.

“Did you want one for real?”

“It’s really annoying,” she said, and twisted it so the stone was below her finger and no longer catching her eye. Then she paused a moment. “Did you mean…”

“They’d make me put my birth year on the certificate and it’d just look really, really creepy.”

Natasha started to laugh. “Never or not anymore?”

“Hmm.” He thought it over. “I think… back then… I think I assumed I would get married, some day. I don’t think I ever… thought about wanting to. It seemed, you know, part of growing up.”

“I used to think if I could make one wish – upon a star, as it were – it’d be to be normal. To just not know… all the things that we are. Sometimes I still do. And when I pictured that normal, I used to see myself with a husband and kids and a dog… I don’t know.”

“I never wanted kids. Three baby sisters was bad enough.”

“And now? Do you ever see us being, well, being done?”

They were nearly back at the safehouse before he answered her. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t see some, some day where I wake up and someone hands me a letter from the Lord above telling me I’ve earned… redemption. But maybe… I could see a day where I wake up and I can’t, anymore. Perhaps.” He leaned down and brushed a kiss over her hair. “I don’t ever see a day I don’t want to spend with you.”

Natasha patted his arm fondly. “Can I get that in writing? Our fights aren’t pretty.”

“Don’t joke,” James said, but he wasn’t upset. “Why, do you see an end?”

“One day,” Natasha said, surprising herself. “Yes. One day… I’m not good at giving up. But one day, I think. A loft, maybe. With big windows. We’d both go crazy in the country. But yes. I hope for that, for… the peace of mind to walk away. With you.”

“Well, if we get there, we’ll get there together.”

“Deal.” And she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and kissed him to seal it.

 

+++

 

_soulmarks_

“No idea,” said Barnes, and tapped his left wrist.

Natasha picked at the label of her beer bottle. “You don’t remember or it was blank?”

“Blank.”

“They probably weren’t born yet.”

“And now I’ll never know.” He shrugged; there was something rueful in his face, but it seemed as if he’d come to terms with it a long, long time ago. “It’s probably for the best. The last thing I wanna do is burden some innocent kid from Iowa with my issues. She’ll have been meant for a different version of me entirely.”

“Is that really what you think? That people like us don’t get soulmates?” Her hands were cold. She put the beer down to rub them together, not looking at him. There was a hollowness in her chest of hope disappointed.

He was startled. “Nooo-o. But I – well.”

“You’re a special case?”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot and took a long drag on his cigarette. “Gonna call me arrogant?”

“Self-obsessed.”

Barnes smiled. “I knew I liked you for a reason, Romanov.”

“Oh do you.”

“Hey. What’s the matter?”

Natasha sighed. “I – nothing. They burnt my mark off, you know. My name. It was in the Latin alphabet, and I couldn’t read it then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She didn’t mention that she’d known the outline of it off by heart, the sweep of the first letter, the little curves and hills that had made up the name of the other half of herself, or that she’d drawn it once, after she’d come to SHIELD, remembering not the individual letters but the overall shape of that messy signature. It had taken ages for the scrawl on the paper before her to crystallise into a name she could read, like one of those trick pictures where you saw one thing, and then tilted your head and saw the other…

“Hey,” he said again.

“Hmm?” She looked up at him.

“It’s probably the most awkward subject change in history,” he said, and cleared his throat, “but, uh. There’s this thing tomorrow, and I thought – you might like to come. With me.”

Her lips parted in surprise. Sudden happiness, as warm and golden as the evening sunlight, began to fill up that pit in her chest.

“I would,” she said. “I mean, I like things.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” They were grinning at each other like idiots.

“Fantastic,” he said happily. And then, “You’ve got a beautiful smile.”

Natasha went bright red. It probably looked terrible with her hair, but James didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

 

+++

 

_vampire au_

She finds him near the water’s edge, attracted by the smell of his blood. He fell into the river – from where she cannot guess; the cliff is tall and sheer and no mortal would survive that drop, though she would – and dragged himself out, somehow. Even as she kneels over him, his eyelids flicker, and he struggles to stay awake. The scent of his blood is rich and tangy in her nostrils, full of life; it makes her ache with hunger. It smells like – like wrought iron, the sun-heated metal railings of her mother’s home when she was a child, before the Red Rooms made her what she is.

Natasha touches his face. No mortal, this. Close to him now she feels it humming under his skin, some strange magic that keeps him alive – barely, but alive. He looks at her, eyes hazy with pain, face twisted; he’s lost so much blood. If she’s going to feed from him, it needs to be now, else his corpse won’t hold enough to satisfy her, and if the Germans re-capture her –

“Please,” he says, a barely audible breath. “Please end – please finish it.”

Her whole body jerks back from him. He’s not the first to ask her for that – the war’s been on for a long time, and she’s seen horrors in the Hydra camps that will haunt even her nightmares. If she lives to have them. But he – the first human being, the first living being, she’s seen for days, this not-mortal who – who what?

“Please,” he says again, dizzily. “Take – whatever – just not – not the Krauts again –”

Look at the both of them: dying monsters in the woods, desperate not to fall into Zola’s hands. _Take whatever_. His blood is what she needs, but he means his clothes, his supplies, if there’s anything left that survived whatever’s happened to him. He must be freezing half to death, frostbite setting in. Or at least, he would be if he were human.

She catches his lapels.

“Not today, darling,” she says, and sinks her teeth into his throat. It’s heaven: hot and rich as summer, filling, nourishing; she can feel the warmth of his blood flushing through her body, warming all her limbs, and suddenly her vision’s clear, her head no longer aches, her hands are steady, the ringing in her ears gone. Someone, not far off, is searching for them, or her, or him. She hears them stamping through the snow, miles away. She hears wolves and deer and owls in the trees, the whisper of small things under the earth, the clatter of pebbles on the mountainside miles above her head.

He licks at her wrist when she presses it to his lips, his eyes closed again; he can’t tell what he’s lapping up, and wouldn’t understand even if he could. “Drink,” she whispers, cupping his head and raising it, pressing her wrist against his teeth. “Drink, dear heart; you’re mine now. You’re mine.” She doesn’t know where the words come from. His fingers wrap around her wrist with a suddenness that makes her jump; suddenly he can hold his head up on his own, is sucking the blood from her veins instead of swallowing what drips into his mouth, his ski flushing with life, his eyes clear, his fingers strong. The suction, the softness of his lips on her skin, sends a sweet ache through her she’s not felt… perhaps not ever. Only Nikolai’s touch summoned a facsimile of it. The stump of his left arm has stopped bleeding. In a few hours the arm will have grown back; faster if they can find another food source. There are no maimed vampires, unless decapitation counts.

At last she laughs, pets his hair, kisses his forehead. “Easy,” she says, “easy. They’re coming for us.”

“What,” he says, blinking up at her. Her blood is smeared around his mouth, and he’s beautiful. “What did you do to me?”

“Saved you,” she says. “They’re coming.”

“We have to run.” He tries to push himself up, but she holds him down, smiling, not wanting him to see the stump.

“Stay calm. You need to rest a little.” Natasha grins. “And when you have, we’ll feast.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

(trying to be silent)

 

Natasha broke first. Bucky shifted his grip on her hips and moved her and she made a tiny noise, a gasp, high-pitched and sharp and strangled, that made him all unsteady; he shook his head, caught between the desire to laugh and the need to keep quiet and the overwhelming necessity of not stopping. "Strike," he rasped against her shoulder, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders; he felt her body shake and realised she was struggling to keep back a laugh.   
  
"Shhh!"  
  
"Oh!" That made him indignant, and he widened his stance and bounced her on his cock again, her shoulders sliding up the wall and down; she let her head fall back against the metal, mouth open, hair a staticky mess, eyes half-closed, skin flushed with sex. All the muscles in his legs and back and arm were straining with the effort of holding her up, fucking her, keeping himself balanced - the whole thing was so distracting that he could last for hours, like this.   
  
Natasha, on the other hand, got to wrap her legs around him and lean back and do sweet fuck all. Under the shirt she was still wearing her tits bounced beautifully when he lifted her again, dropped her back down more forceful than before; she did that thing where she sort of let him hold her and wriggled deliciously between him and the wall, laughing with delight. "God, yeah, harder -"  
  
"Now who's being loud." Bucky gritted his teeth, but he didn't turn her down - par for the course - there was an _embarrassing_ moan somewhere in his throat wanting to get out, and he wouldn't let it, half the people on this Helicarrier had super-hearing, their sex life was private.   
  
Except, you know, when it was on this Helicarrier in crew quarters with paper-thin walls and so little soundproofing that he could hear Steve snoring down the hall.   
  
Strangled giggle; her hot strong hands slid down his shoulders to his biceps, caressing, fingers digging in as he fucked her, not the right angle to really pull her apart, but neither of them were in a hurry. She'd hooked her fingertips into the rill between the top two plates of the bicep again. If he moved his arm it would pinch her. He locked it in place, moved his right hand down to the small of her back, and lifted her again, rocking forwards into the strong welcoming body. "Nat - love -"  
  
"Shh." She pushed her shoulders away from the wall, leaning forwards to kiss him; the change in angle drove him deeper inside, and she made another one of those sweet little gasps against his lips. "Oh, oh god James -"  
  
"Move your hand," he said desperately - she knew what he meant, her right hand coming up to grip a handful of his hair; he stepped even closer to the wall, so that her whole back from shoulders to hips was pressed against it, and for a few moments they were still, kissing fiercely, the wet noises obscenely loud in the tiny room, Jesus wept. She was fluttering around him, beckoning; soon she was twisting again, her legs tight around his waist.   
  
"C'mon - c'mon, move, fuck me, harder, want to come with you inside me -"  
  
"Shhhhhhhhhh." Forceful as he could while he was trying not to laugh, and bit her lip when she snarled at him, worried it plumb and swollen, smugly aware that it would still be so in five hours time at breakfast, but Natasha got her own back by pinching his nipples, and a sound out of him besides; Bucky shouted, muffling the yell frantically against her shoulder, the sudden little spike of pain running through him like the slap that brings you out of hysteria, mind gone foggy with desire focussed again, marginally. He flung a hand out to the wall and turned them so his shoulders were against it, hot with her body heat and damp with her sweat, leaning back with his legs spread and only his hands holding her up. That made her wild, he'd known it would; she gripped his shoulders and sobbed a little when he started fucking her again, tiny little movements barely enough to even tease. She pressed her heels against the backs of his thighs, scrambled for leverage to fuck herself on his cock.   
  
"Sadist," she hissed, "I said _harder_."  
  
"You in a hurry? Got five hours." Bucky grinned at her, stole a kiss, sighing. She was clinging close to his chest now and the cotton of her shirt was rubbing deliciously against his skin, and yeah, not to boast, but he could keep this up for as long as she wanted him to.   
  
"I gotta admit," Natasha said, trying for indifference, "I like sleep almost as much as I -"  
  
He laughed again, short and sharp and much too loud. She groaned, half pleasure, half exasperation.  
  
" _Quiet._ " Her whole face was lit up with mirth. "Used to be so good at this!"  
  
At silent sex, yes, and at sex in the dark too, all the lights off lest someone notice, her body known to him by touch alone, no words between them, not even names, not even love, struggling to keep even their breathing steady and quiet. The times they had been together in the field with no chance of sudden discovery were the times with her he remembered best. Her voice, the sweet little noises she made, were the sounds that knit their lovemaking together, made it real, made it his, made him hers.  
  
"Yeah," Bucky said, his forehead resting against hers, her arms around his neck now, her weight in his arms nothing, nothing at all, he could carry her forever. "Glad we got out of that habit."  
  
This time Natasha let herself laugh; kissed him long and hard, and he thought, when she pulled back, that her eyes were a little wet. "Gonna remind you of that tomorrow morning when nobody can look at us -"  
  
"I can hear Steve snoring, come on!"   
  
They ended up on the floor, him on his knees and her above him, laughing like idiots and still trying to keep quiet; and while nobody seemed to have noticed a thing the next morning, the truth was, neither of them would have cared: not anymore, and never again.  
  
Well. Probably neither of them would have cared. After all, it was still private.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

(healing vagina)

 

  
  
Bucky's first reaction was to start laughing in sheer disbelief, but given the way his ribs protested that didn't last long. Natasha's only reaction was to blink, twice. Then she said, "There will be absolutely no recording made for science purposes what. So. Ever."  
  
Half the scientists looked glum; the others looked relieved.   
  
+++  
  
"There are probably worse temporary magic superpowers," Natasha said later, when the room had cleared, and the cameras had been turned off, and they had hung a couple of blankets over the observation windows because, well.   
  
"Sure," said Bucky, sprawling over the hospital bed, "but it's probably the most ridiculous." Moving too much hurt like hell; the wound itself wasn't painful, even if it was glowing, but the surrounding bruising went bone-deep, and it ached. Bigger than it had been, too, and though the doctors wouldn't let him take the bandages off Bucky had an awful suspicion that the bruises were expanding because the wound itself was growing larger.   
  
She put her hands on her hips. "Considering that you're the one who needs to get rid of the alien-magic-infected hole in your side, is it really wise to mock me right now?"  
  
Bucky raised his head off the mattress. "You don't have to do this," he said. Steve and the others would catch the alien sorceror and make him reverse whatever he'd done, and maybe it would take a while and hurt a lot but, well, he'd waited out pain before. And Natasha was always, always private, which this situation was the opposite of...   
  
"I might have known you'd go all martyred about it." Her lips were twitching. That meant she thought he was being adorable.   
  
"It's not like -"  
  
"What? It's not like what? It's not like" - she checked her watch ostentatiously - "forty-eight hours ago we weren't screwing like bunnies."  
  
"I mean I don't know what was going on in _your_ head," Bucky said sanctimoniously, "but _I_ was making love to you."  
  
She crossed her arms over her chest and tried a repressingly exasperated look, but he caught the way her mouth twitched in spite of herself, and after a second she had to turn to look at the door to hide her grin. "You're so obnoxious."  
  
He sighed. "Sorry. I just, you know." He waved a hand, groping for words, and Natasha came over to him and sat on the side of the hospital bed, taking his right hand in hers.   
  
"Being the damsel in distress is having a very adverse effect on you, I understand." She nodded solemnly.   
  
"I'm obnoxious," said Bucky to the ceiling. "Me." Then he closed his fingers around hers and tugged at her. "Come here, then. My girl, no damsel in distress in the history of the world has ever been more willing to be ravished by a knight in shining armour."  
  
"You only want me for my magic sex healing powers," Natasha said, climbing over him, balanced on her hands and knees, her hair hanging into his face, and Bucky said, "Don't be ridiculous, those are temporary," and kissed her before she could say anything else.  
  
+++  
  
"Does it feel different?" Natasha asked breathlessly.  
  
"Different?" James was twisting underneath her, torn between pushing up into her body and holding still because his side hurt; she rocked her hips obligingly, moving him inside her, loving how big he was, how hot. He didn't feel different. His skin was a little hot, probably from the wound, but the strong body underneath her was otherwise unchanged, and as yet there were no mystic alien sex magic ecstasies: only the sweet, ordinary miracle of having him naked under her hands and knowing that all the power in him was hers to hold, all his vulnerabilities hers to protect.   
  
"Magic," she explained, rubbing her hands through his chest hair and smiling when he moaned a little.   
  
"Oh. No. No different. Maybe later?"  
  
"Better get to later." Natasha braced her hands on his abdomen, grinning a bit, and lifted off him, sighing as his cock dragged perfectly along her walls. She sank back down slowly, inch by inch, wriggling a little, as if it was difficult to work it inside her, sighing again when he was all the way in her. "Oh you feel good in me..."  
  
James licked his lips, laughing; he was gripping the edge of the thin mattress in either hand, breathing hard, a pretty pink flush on his cheekbones, and Natasha did it again, lifting up agonisingly slow and working back down with little twitches of her hips that drove him mad. You could see it in the way his hands clenched, the press of his teeth in his lower lip, the way his throat worked as he swallowed.   
  
"Tease," he said roughly.  
  
"Mmm-hmm." Natasha dug her nails into his skin just a little, loving the shudder that took hold of him, the way he moved his head on the pillow. They had barely gotten anywhere yet, not by their usual standards, and she was already unsteady with it, her breath uneven, her skin sticky with perspiration. When she upped the pace a little he moaned, that low hoarse noise that set off fireworks somewhere in her stomach, and - everything was - there was some heavy warmth gathering in her body, somewhere in her chest, too high up to be impending orgasm. Pleasure and heat licked through her as she fucked herself on his cock, chasing that strange warmth, trying to focus on it; it was like it was spreading, a line of heat along her spine, folding over her limbs.   
  
"Tasha," James said. "Natasha, love."  
  
She opened her eyes, staring down at his face, barely seeing the way the bed rattled against the wall, the ripple of his muscles as he strained to hold still and mostly lost. All her attention was taken up by how gorgeous his eyes were, how wide and wild, the colours sparking and spinning off each other, swallowing her up: if she looked at them forever she would be happy, she knew it, if she just stayed here... there was no reason ever to leave, not when it felt this good, not when it was bliss to be with him like this, this man who routinely smiled at her and said _I'm yours_ as if he hadn't spent a century being treated as a thing. Oh, the colours were beautiful, and the heat was so much, so much, so lovely to hold and have and bask in, so perfect to be so hot, it was thrumming in her veins, endless. If ecstasy had a sound, this was it. Natasha tossed her head back and leaned forwards a little, shifting the angle of his cock inside her just right, and her thighs were aching and her hands were slick with her sweat and his and god she wanted to come, wanted to come around him, wanted that heat and the thrum in her blood to swallow her up, wanted to give to it him, to share it with him, to show him what he did to her, and moment by moment - oh god how good this was, unbearable -   
  
She shuddered back to herself, gasping a little, when James put his hands on her breasts, rubbing at her nipples, kneading her flesh, pleasurable little ache much more real than that strange dizzy heat.  
  
"You're gorgeous," he said, "you're so beautiful, Natalia," and Natasha lurched forwards clumsily to kiss him. His arms went around her, trapping her against his chest, god, all that hot skin and his quick breathing and that soft sweet mouth.   
  
"I think," she panted, "when I come -"  
  
"Hold you here just right and fuck you through it," he promised. "Love how you squirm up against me when it's too much but you don't wanna stop, how your voice gets higher when you say my name -"  
  
Natasha bit at his collar-bone, shivering. The thrumming was getting worse: it was like pressure under her skin, power that was pushing at her, wanting to go somewhere. "No I mean alien sex magic."   
  
"Oh, sure. Make it boring." They kissed again, deep and fierce, gasping into each other's mouths, just rocking together, just moving in slow sweet tandem, until his fingers and hers found her clit at the same time and - and - pressure just there and a hard rub here and -   
  
Natasha didn't usually cry out, but she thought she did this time. Bliss was one word for it, all spinning lights and weightlessness and joy, ripples of sensation prolonged when James moved inside her. The thrumming had dissolved into her orgasm and the heat was slowly fading, leaving her feeling boneless and fuck-drunk and languid: the perfect state of mind for round two.   
  
"OK?" James said hoarsely.   
  
"Are you?" He was injured. She was so muzzy she had to keep repeating it to herself.   
  
"Yeah. Think so. My side -"  
  
Natasha pushed herself up on trembling arms, remembering too late that she was still actually sitting on his cock, and she nearly fell back onto his chest as the aftershocks rolled through her, a thousand times enhanced. James gasped as if he felt them too, and put his hands on her hips while she peeled off the bandages.   
  
"Damage?" he said.   
  
"It's healed," Natasha said, running her fingers over pink new skin. "It's all gone, even the bruising."  
  
"Heh. I feel amazing."  
  
"Good for you." She dropped the bandages to the floor, and this time she let herself collapse atop him, sighing contentedly. "I'm wrung out."   
  
Those big hands stroked her back slowly, and then curved over her ass. "Yeah?"  
  
"I'm afraid you're going to have to do all the work yourself this time." She grinned against his throat.  
  
"Invalid privileges lost, I see."   
  
"What'll happen with the sex magic if we go for round two?"  
  
"Uh, no idea."   
  
Natasha swallowed a giggle. "Enquiring minds..."  
  
"Scientific duty," James said promptly, and then started laughing, and, yes, perfect, perfect state of mind for round two.   
  
+++  
  
"What," said Steve, "are you idiots, it could have killed you or something."  
  
"There's a really obvious joke in there and Barnes is about to be the schmuck who makes it," said Natasha.   
  
"Just be grateful nobody else got hurt," said James, and yelped when she leaned over and smacked his arm with the mission report.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

( _hairbrushing_ )

 

For a while as her shoulder was being popped back in and her ribs bandaged up Natasha had been - well - let's not beat around the bush, ey - grouchy. The prospect of being off the active roster, and thus damned to paperwork hell and interminable briefings, for the next few weeks was not a pleasant one, and the fact that she could have avoided it all if she'd just been paying better attention rankled.   
  
"A multi-storey car park fell on us," said Bucky. "I don't think diving out of the way of that one block of concrete would have helped as much as you think it would."  
  
"You know what my least favourite thing is about you?" Natasha said. "How whenever I'm angry about something you go all _reasonable_. And the more reasonable you are the more I look like an irrational idiot."  
  
Bucky bit his lip. Lush and reddened - had he been worrying at his mouth? - his lips drew her eye, so she couldn't miss it that he was trying not to smile. "Sorry. If it helps any, I really hate the way you leave the dishes overnight."  
  
Natasha laughed in spite of herself, her bad mood blown away despite the lingering pain, and once home she kissed Bucky's cheek and set out for the bathroom. Shoulder and ribs were manageable, though the rudimentary sponge-bath she gave herself threw water everywhere across the floor, right up until the moment came when she looked at herself in the mirror and realised she had no hope in hell of raising either arm above her head to brush her hair. Her skin pink with hot water and awkward scrubbing, she frowned at herself. Then she glowered at the hair brush.   
  
"Hey," Bucky said from the bathroom door. "You OK?" He was shirtless, in sweatpants, and he probably wanted to shower and clean his teeth and just climb into bed and sleep, just as much as she did. His own bruises were already fading.  
  
"Fine." She sighed. "Could you brush my hair for me?"  
  
"Sure." He smiled at her as he came up behind her, like the sun coming up. Natasha held up the hair brush, watching his face in the mirror, how - how soft and glad he looked. He liked to do things for her, little chores and favours; sometimes it made her impatient, but usually it made her feel... wanted. He had an instinct to take care of people that was a combination, she thought, of liking to be needed and wanting to show someone they were appreciated... Gently he untangled her hair from the knot at the back of her head that she'd tied it in before the mission, drawing the hairband out and dropping it, combing it with his fingers before he picked up the brush. The teeth scraped softly across her scalp, starting at her forehead and pulling back, his left hand gathering her hair loosely at the back of her neck.   
  
Natasha shivered. The Winter Soldier, half-naked in her bathroom, brushing her hair... still a little damp, her skin prickled with the cool air, her nipples hard. His face was still and quiet in the mirror, the lines of his body relaxed as he looked down at her. Stroke after stroke, the brush ran through her hair, pausing here and there to attack a tangle, then resuming that smooth path; when he hit a tricky bit his eyes would narrow, his mouth purse. He had always been gentle with her when he had the choice; she remembered him stitching a knife-wound in her thigh once, the way he'd touched her - the look on his face had been the same. And when he'd finished he had looked up at her; you'll function, he might have said, or don't be so sloppy next time. Instead he'd touched her other knee and smiled, very faintly, as if only just now remembering how to make that shape with his mouth, and she had touched his face and leaned down and kissed him, half in a trance.   
  
"All right?"  
  
Natasha shivered again. "Yes," she said softly.   
  
"OK." Bucky didn't stop; again and again the soft scrape across her scalp, the way his fingers brushed her neck or back lightly, the gentle pull that had her closing her eyes and letting her head fall the way he wanted it, back to expose her throat, pushing it forward or slightly to the side. He gathered her hair into a ponytail and brushed it, changed the angle and brushed from underneath a few times, the teeth of the brush on the back of her neck. Smiling a little, he parted her hair neatly, brushed it straight; then he put the brush between his teeth and braided it loosely with deft, practiced movements.   
  
"Who were they?"  
  
"Hmm?" He tossed the brush onto the shelf.   
  
"The other girls whose hair you've brushed." She frowned at him in the mirror, mock-indignant.  
  
"Only three," he said, straight-faced. His sisters. Natasha hadn't thought she was the jealous type - she knew in her bones what they were to each other - but apparently the idea of him performing these little intimacies for another girl made her ache.   
  
"Can you do pin curls as well?"  
  
"Definitely not." Bucky tied the braid off easily and bent to kiss her good shoulder, the line of her neck. "Why, did you want some?"  
  
"I like it when you touch me," she said. And then, half-ashamed: "I like it when you look after me."  
  
His eyes met hers in the mirror, very pale in the bathroom light, laugh lines deep around them. "Remember that time I broke my right arm and you washed my hair for me for a week?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Best week ever."  
  
Natasha laughed helplessly. She turned in his arms and kissed him, leaning up on her tiptoes. Bucky cupped the nape of her neck in his left hand; then he wrapped his fingers around her braid and tugged, playfully.   
  
"Not a word about vegetables," she said.   
  
"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world," Bucky quoted solemnly, and kissed her again.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

( _genderswap - as in, the sex is m/m_ )

 

 

“ _Oh_ ,” Natasha said; she sounded like all the air had been punched out of her at once, and Bucky laughed delightedly and wrapped his hand around her pretty cock again. Her thighs were spread at either side of him, heavier now, longer, and when he stroked her they jerked, brushing against him. God she was beautiful. As a man she was taller, but still built compact, muscled but lean, quick; a gymnast’s body, a dancer’s. Her face was different, too. Her features weren’t massively changed – it was just little things, the angle of her jaw slightly more square, her cheeks somehow… flatter, less rounded.

Bucky loved it. Her narrow hips were twisting up again and again, rolling into his grip, fucking his hand beautifully. It had been a long time since he’d had his hands on someone else’s cock, and he played with her lazily, exploring the foreskin and the thick vein and rubbing his thumb over the slit, pre-come sticky on his fingers. A flush cascaded down her chest, her lush mouth was bitten red and swollen, her eyes half-closed; her hands were pulling at the sheets, at the pillow under her hips.

“That’s it, beautiful. Feel how good it is…”

“God,” she said, chest heaving. Her voice was deeper now, and louder too, as if she couldn’t judge the volume anymore with these new vocal cords – sort of like the way her centre of balance was all off. Bucky had spent most of the day with his hand at her elbow, just in case. She raised her head off the pillow a ways, eyes gleaming wickedly. “I tell you what, I understand a lot of things about you right now that –”

“Hey, hey, cut that out!”

“Or what?”

“First rule of sex as a guy,” he said, laughing. “Don’t make fun of the person who has their hands on your dick.” He pitched over her, his hands in the sheets at either side of her shoulders, falling into the cradle of her thighs; she arched up against him, sighing, and gasped into his mouth when her cock rubbed against his.

“Ah, oh wow.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, a little hoarse himself. God it had been years since he’d felt that… “Fuck, Nat.” He kissed her wet open mouth over and over, loving the scrape of stubble against his lips, the different shape of her throat now, the way even her skin seemed to have a different texture. He pinned her hands to the mattress and suckled hickeys into her throat just as he would have if her body hadn’t been changed by weird alien magic; her moans were deeper, but otherwise the same.

“I miss your pretty tits,” he confessed, laving kisses along her collar-bone. “How soft they are and how they rub against my chest and how you bite your lip and squirm and sigh when I touch them.” Though, it had to be said, she didn’t seem any less delighted with him than usual when he sucked on her nipples, her hips twisting up against him again, her breath coming short.

“I – oh, oh god. Don’t – don’t stop that. God, everything feels so _new_.” She barked a laugh. “I’m a Madonna song.”

Bucky sniggered. “I guess you’re lucky I’m not all that straight.”

Natasha sighed; she pulled her hands free from his slowly and ran them up his arms, over his back, stroking him, making him shiver and sigh; then into his hair, cupping his head – funny sensation, her hands that bit bigger than usual. “If you were?”

“You’d be in here alone with the vibe and the lube, looking for your own prostate!”

“I know where yours is, how hard can it be,” she said impishly.

He laughed again and kissed her reddened nipples. Her chest was smooth and hairless, and as she arched underneath him her cock rubbed across his abs; her eyes fluttered closed, and she groaned softly. Oh her voice, her voice was twisting things inside his chest, her teasing and her nervousness, her readiness to explore this, to trust him with this. He wanted to cuff her hands above her head and spread her legs and fuck her till kingdom come; he wanted to feel those long fingers, thicker than ever before, open him up and stroke his cock and pinch bruises into his hips as he sank down on her, took her inside his body. His blood was pounding with want, his breath coming quick, his cock aching. Carefully he took those sensations and put them aside, just for a little, just to keep his head clear a few minutes longer.

“Hey,” Bucky said gently.

“Yeah.” The glorious eyes opened a little.

“Can I ride you?”

Natasha’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and she shuddered and clutched at him. “Yes,” she croaked. “Yeah, I want that.”

“Fuck you first?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” She was biting her lips raw. Bucky leaned up again and kissed them softly. God he loved her so. He wanted to hold her close and kiss her till she laughed and relaxed for him sweetly, wanted to bury himself inside her and never, ever part from her again.

“Shh. I have you.”

“You’ve had my ass a lot,” she pointed out, grinning.

“This time’s going to feel a little different, I think.” He knelt up, grinning back, and ran his hands soothingly over her thighs before he reached for the lube.

“I’ll let you know.” Her hands were clenched in the sheets again, white-knuckled. Bucky caught his breath, watching them.

“You’re so nervous,” he said softly.

“I’m scared.” Natasha tipped her head to one side and met his gaze squarely. “Stupid, isn’t it? But I can’t even throw a punch like this and be sure of hitting what I mean to hit.”

Bucky dropped the lube bottle into the sheets and put both hands on her thighs again, feeling the tension in her, trying to soothe her. “I know,” he said. “I get it. Even without – changing, I get it. The first time I did this with a guy I was kinda terrified.”

She smiled. “But you went through with it.”

“I was drunk,” he said bluntly. “It was after Azzano. I went out and got roaring drunk and met a guy through an old squadmate… I’d gone out three nights that week and gone home with a different girl each one, and apparently as far as I was concerned whiskey dick was a _myth_.”

“The serum,” she said.

“Only explanation,” he agreed. “I think that was when I knew, you know… when I realised that, even with my head in knots there was nothing wrong with me, physically, that was when I knew I wasn’t normal anymore.” He heaved a sigh, and then he smiled. “So I was feeling angry, and dumb, and reckless, and ready to prove that my body was still _mine_ , that I was worked up over nothing, imagining things, and that no one got to tell me what to do with myself unless I let them – not Zola and not Schmidt and not even Uncle Sam.”

“And it was good,” Natasha said encouragingly. She was smiling up at him now, a little sad, but for his sake, not her own, and her eyes were solemn and loving. Bucky loved to tell her about his past. She always looked at him as if she were storing every word away in her memory, holding it close to treasure it. One day, perhaps, he would be able to put it into words, how safe and how loved that made him feel.

“It was amazing,” he said. “It blew my mind. I was still walking funny when I had to report back in two days later. Freddie – that was his name, Freddie – I’m pretty sure he thought I was ridiculous. Cute, but ridiculous. I think he got off on it that I had no idea what I was doing.” Bucky laughed quietly. “It was just so.” He shook his head, shrugging. “I chose it. That was what mattered. I walked in there and said, _do this to me_ , and he did, and it was great.”

Natasha was still smiling. “I know the feeling,” she said. “This one time, years ago, I kissed a man I shouldn’t have…”

Bucky bit his lip. “He’d been dreaming about it,” he said. “Your body, the shape of your mouth…”

“Different right now.” Teasing, though; gentle, quiet.

“Still dreaming about it,” Bucky promised. “When I saw you this morning it was all I could think about.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“God yeah. Get that hospital gown off, see what’s underneath, find out how to make you moan, what gets you going, where to touch, how to kiss you…” Arousal had flagged a little with their conversation; he picked up the lube again and smeared a generous dollop over his fingers. “Find out what your cock tastes like, suck you till you beg me.” With exaggerated care he wrapped his left hand around her cock, caressed and teased her, watched it fill again, watched her blush and gasp and wriggle about. Easy, easy. Bucky spread his knees and bent down, licking at the head, light and slow at first and then harder, taking her in a ways and moving back off, his ears full of the sound of her noises, high-pitched and breathless, and when she sank her hands into his hair and pulled at him he rubbed her asshole with wet fingers.

“Fuck,” she hissed. “Fuck, I – _fuck_.” Bucky grinned to himself as best he could and took her in deeper, filling his mouth with her, rewarded by her cries and the pulse of her hot cock against his tongue, by the way she pressed back against him as he pushed two fingers inside her. “More – more, oh my _god_ , do that again, that, right there –” Three fingers, and her voice straining and her cock jerking in his mouth; she pulled harder on his hair. “I can’t – James, I’m going to –”

“Shhh.” He pulled off, tightening his finger and thumb around the base of her cock, and Natasha sobbed, actually sobbed, her chest heaving. “It’s all right, sweetheart, you’re doing so well, so beautifully well.” Croon at her a bit, praise her the way she liked. He had to close his eyes, he was so hard it hurt, tiny shivers racking him, hungry for her, desperate. She was so hot around his fingers, so tight, grasping at him eagerly; it was driving him crazy. “Want to feel you come on my cock, darling, can you wait that long? Want to feel you clench all up around me.”

“Fuck,” Natasha said again. Her eyelashes were wet, her face flushed, her mouth trembling. “Now. Now, dammit, I want –”

“All right. All right.” Bucky drew his fingers out of her gently, shivering when he saw her hole fluttering around them, a little lube dripping out of her. He moved her hips where he wanted her, heard her gasp and laugh, slicked his cock with clumsy hands, and then – braced on his knees, guided himself in – she pushed up on her elbows to watch, laughing again, though unsteadily.

“Oh my god. Oh _fuck_.”

“Different?” he said, strained.

“A little,” she said hoarsely.

“OK,” Bucky said, struggling to keep still while she grew used to him. “Now I’m going to fuck you till you come for me and don’t you touch yourself –”

“Come here,” Natasha murmured, tugging at him till he was sprawled across her body, shifting her hips so he slid even deeper, spreading her legs yet further. “Come here. God you’re so heavy, I love how deep you are in me, how big.” She kissed him, breathless. “Come on. I want you to fuck me till I come like this and then I want you to _keep going_ till I’m hard again because you promised you’d ride me –”

Bucky groaned, jerking against her helplessly. “ _Fuck_. Stop talking like that, god, you drive me crazy. I love you… Christ. You know I’ll give you everything you want.”

“I know,” Natasha said. “I know.”

+++

When Bucky woke up the next morning it was obvious Natasha was still a guy – his back was pressed against her flat chest, her morning wood against his ass. He sighed, stirring, wriggling back against her. Something ached low in his belly, something warm that shivered delightfully, imagining her fucking him again, pressing him facedown into the pillows and sliding inside where he was still wet and open from last night, from where he’d straddled her hips and sank down on her cock and fucked himself on it till he came all over himself, till she came inside him, filling him up, and just –

Hmm. Bucky frowned at the window across the room; something was different, _felt_ different.

“Morning.” Natasha leaned over him from behind, kissed his ear, his shoulder. Her stubble scratched on his skin and the metal of his shoulder, and Bucky laughed sleepily.

“You OK?”

He would defend himself, later on, by pointing out that five seconds after waking up in the morning, pleasurably sore from last night’s spectacular sex and reasonably certain you’ll be having a lot more of that before much more time has passed, is not a great moment to pay much attention to the sound of your own voice.

“Fine,” she said, sounding hugely amused. “Are you?”

“Hmm? Uh-huh.”

“Only.” A big warm hand caressed his thigh, ran up to his hip and waist; fingers circled his bellybutton curiously, and Bucky pressed back against her, humming happily. Slowly Natasha’s hand slid up – up to – to –

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Bucky said, folding the duvet back to stare.

“Only I think you’re about the right size to borrow my bras,” Natasha said, and kissed him as her hand cupped his breast.

Bucky wasn’t wrong about the repeat performance of the spectacular sex, at least. 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

( _incubus/succubus. i think it's time i gave in and admitted i just really like supernatural creature aus. the serum's perfect for it!_ )

 

_You have to tell me_ , Bucky always used to murmur in that sweet, crooning voice, _if it hurts_. And Natasha would arch up against him, sighing soft and low, hooding her lovely green eyes seductively, and say, _what if it does hurt?_ And he would kiss her, slow and deep, and bite her lower lip as she smiled, and answer, _I’ll do it again_. And again, and again…

“I could feel it, even back then,” she says. She’s lying propped on her elbow, her head in her hand; her other hand is playing, idly, with his balls, stroking and rolling them. He’s hard again, leaking pre-come onto his abs, but he’s still for her, his arms behind his head where she told him to put them, smiling at her, as if drugged on pleasure; she loves this part of the night, when they’re fed and peaceful but not quite sated. They both do.

“Yeah?” His voice is low and lazy.

“Every time I came, I could feel you getting stronger. Feeding off me…”

“I don’t know how we ever leave this bed at all.” Bucky turns his head thoughtfully. The boy is asleep, blond hair mussed, his body covered in their marks. They both fed from him deeply tonight – it would take, now, only a very little push to tip him over. They’ve never killed anyone like this; at first they were too exaggeratedly careful, stopping long short of satiation, but control grows over time, and now they have the trick of it, the knife-edge between glutting themselves and killing their – prey? Partners?

The word’s not important. Of course, neither is the boy. Natasha laughs quietly, wrapping her fingers around the base of Bucky’s cock; he sighs out softly, shuddering.

“When did you know what I’d made you?” He’s smiling; the guilt’s long banished. She won’t have him beating himself up over something he couldn’t have known about himself, and there’s nothing in this to regret, not for her. She has him – conceivably, for eternity; neither of them have aged since the Fifties – and they’re free. Compared to those two facts, the inconvenience of their regular need to take some pretty, willing human into their bed and magically feed off his or her orgasms is a minor one, to say the least.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I think… by the time we reached Turkey, maybe…” She thinks back, remembering their long arduous flight south, the way he _needed_ her, so much, so often, using her again and again, twice and thrice and four times a day, and how she was never too sore, too tired, too sated to take him, her needs matching his…

How he’d grown ever stronger, clearer-headed, how one morning in the dawn he had kissed her awake, his face wet with tears, and when she’d wrapped herself around him and said, _what’s wrong, my star_ , he’d shaken his head, laughing, and told her: _my name is Bucky_.

It had begun, all those years ago, very traditionally: in her dreams. Days in the training halls, teaching girls to fight and kill; putting the finishing touches on Karpov’s new weapon that he was so proud of, this silent young soldier with his still face and his mechanical answers in accented Russian. Only sometimes something would flicker up in him, amusement or fondness for the girls, maybe, gratitude for something she’d taught him. And slowly he had taken over her nights: she had dreamed his mouth smiling at last, his face animated, his eyes bright, his hands on her gentle, his body big and heavy, his cock stretching her deliciously; she’d begun waking in the mornings aching with him, for him, tired and dizzy and listless until she sank into bed again and dreamed herself back into his arms, and then, oh then, when they had finally been sent out together, when the cameras were gone and the mikes turned off and their handlers hundreds of miles away…

Then Natasha Romanov had found something with her handsome soldier that she had known she would never let anyone take from her again.

“Istanbul,” he says now, lazy as sin. “What was her name?”

“I don’t remember.” She had been a lovely girl, though, all long limbs and dark hair. Natasha remembers the sound of her sobbing and the way those long thighs had clamped around her shoulders in orgasm, how she’d moaned and sighed and lain sweet and pliant under Bucky when he took her again, and the dizzy high her orgasms had given them both.

“Why all this maudlin reminiscing?”

“Maudlin!” Natasha says, indignant. “How very dare you.” She strokes him lazily, running her fist up his cock and back down again, feeling it jump in her hand, the skin so soft, still damp with her slick. Her skin is tight with arousal, her body aching for his touch; she forces it down, unwilling to make this quick, not this, the most perfect part of their nights together. “No, the truth is, I remembered something that appears to have escaped you.” Little twist when she reaches the head of his cock, and Bucky sighs, control slipping at last, pushing his hips up into her hand. “The fact is – though of course, given the circumstances, I cannot rule out –”

“Oh stop talking like a lawyer,” he says, laughing helplessly. “What fact and what circumstances?”

Natasha leans over him and kisses the red swollen lips softly. “I think it’s our anniversary.”

He kisses her back, sweet and slow. “First kiss? First smile? First _real_ conversation?”

“Oh, yes, I remember the first smile, sure.” She’s giggling, her hand faltering on his cock.

“I remember yours,” he says. “The first smile you let me see.”

She’s inordinately pleased. “You do? That’s” – helplessly she breaks off to laugh – “that’s _you_ , all over. I remember the first time we touched…”

“When was that?”

“Training hall,” Natasha says promptly. “I took hold of your hand to show you the grip on the knife, and your face didn’t change but I could feel your pulse in your wrist…”

“Oh, yes. Now I remember.” Bucky heaves a sigh. “God, I wanted so badly to cut those trousers off you and bend you over the bench.”

“Tell me more.” They’re both laughing, their noses brushing, his breath hot on her face. His eyes have always mesmerised her, and he’s got such lovely long eyelashes. She’s lost in admiration of them when he kisses her again, suckles on her lower lip.

“Let me fuck you.”

“Maybe I want to ride you.” She pouts at him.

“No you don’t,” he coaxes. “You’ve come six times tonight and you’re in that _mood_ of yours, you want to lie back, and spread your gorgeous legs, and let me take care of you just right.”

“I didn’t know I had a mood,” Natasha says. She strokes him again, slowly slowly, dragging her fist up his cock, and rubs her thumb over the head; he shudders, and she watches his eyelashes flutter, his mouth tighten.

“So many moods. All of ‘em for me. But this one is my favourite.”

“Is that so?” She’s enchanted.

Bucky laughs again, and she sees the way the muscles in his arms twitch – he wants to put them around her, hold her close, roll them over and fuck her lazy and sweet and slow. “Don’t you know by now, my darling?”

“I love the sound of your voice. I love it especially when you’re saying sweet things about me.”

“Well,” he says. “Far be it for me to fail in that duty. I love you, my Natalia; I love you best like this, so sweet for me and eager and knowing exactly how you want me. I love you best when you’re angry, you get this little scrunch in your nose, it’s adorable. I love you best when you –”

Her phone starts beeping. She snarls indignantly, and Bucky laughs. “That scrunch right there.” The boy (Toby! That’s it) beside them stirs and mutters; Natasha sits up to reach the phone on the bedside table, but she deliberately doesn’t stop playing with Bucky’s cock. Oh to have him in her, filling her… her thighs are sticky with her slick, his come, and moving, sitting up, makes more of that mess slide out of her. She clenches herself, remembering the times he’s bound her and spread her open and ordered her not to lose a drop of his come; perhaps she’ll sit on his face now and he can clean his own mess up. Natasha grins, tightening her hand around him, and Bucky sighs and smiles and rolls his hips into her fist again, lazy and sweet.

“It’s Coulson,” she says, checking her messages. “Wanting to know how broke we are.”

“Not actually all that broke.”

Natasha laughs quietly. “How much longer are we going to keep pretending that we don’t work for SHIELD?”

“Until we’re sure that them knowing of our… condition… won’t condemn us both to a protracted death,” Bucky says. Or worse, of course, but he doesn’t need to say that. A lifetime of servitude, mindless, choiceless, powers neutered, muzzled like animals: they’ve faced that prospect before, and didn’t much enjoy it. And yet: to do nothing and turn Coulson down would be selfishness. Natasha doesn’t believe in the concept of sin, generally speaking, but if such a thing exists, apathy is the definition of it. She puts her phone down again, biting her lip. Bucky stirs, but he before he breaks she bends over him and kisses that adorable cleft in his chin.

“Forget SHIELD. Forget Coulson. Forget everything but me.”

“Only too happy to,” he murmurs. “Oh, sweetheart, please. Please, Natalia, I want to be inside you, I want to make you feel good, feel you come around me… please, darling.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” she says, biting her lip, laughing softly, and she kneels up and straddles his hips and rubs the head of his cock along her messy cunt, sighing in delight at the lovely hot friction, watching the flush spill over his face and chest with half-closed eyes. “Now don’t you move unless I tell you to.”

“Want to hold you,” he says sulkily, but he doesn’t move.

“I don’t care what you want, love. You promised me you’d make me feel good.”

The pouting mouth curls into a smile, and though Bucky’s hands twitch he leaves them there, folded behind his head, all stretched out for her across the mattress, eyes fixed on her face as Natasha positions his cock just so and sinks down on him, slowly slowly.

“Happy anniversary,” he breathes when he’s inside her to the hilt, and she pitches forwards, laughing, to kiss him.

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

( _d/s_ )

 

"I bet you did all the reading," Natasha says lazily.  
  
"I like to read," Bucky agrees, straight-faced. Straight-backed too, straight-shouldered, his hands loosely curled on his thighs; he hasn't moved in half an hour, except for his eyes, dragging over her hot as a touch. His thighs are spread just so, his cock tenting his pants even though she hasn't so much as touched him. Earlier she turned the heating down a couple of degrees, just to watch the goosebumps, the way his nipples tighten.   
  
She leans forwards, smiling, elbows on her knees; she's sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking down at him, watching the way his hair falls, the curve of his lips. Letting herself stare at him in a way she rarely does, admiring the power and the strength in his body. It's a heady thing, the way he's smiling, the hot, avid way he's looking at her. What she asks, he'll do; what she wants, he'll get for her. Some of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world have spent decades being afraid of this man, of what he is, and here he's kneeling, quiescent if not meek, on the floor of their bedroom, and every line of his body's telling her, _all this power's yours_.   
  
It makes her light-headed. It's also really turning her on. He can sit there for another five or six hours, and he will, because he never lets her down; the real question is how much longer Natasha can stand not to have her hands on him.   
  
She grins to herself. _Let's find out._

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

( _touch starvaton/hugging_ )

 

It was her hand in his that did it. All that dancing around each other, all their good intentions - let's take it slow, let's do it properly this time - and Natasha just put her fingers in the palm of his left hand, squeezed his fingers - she'd meant for it to be in passing, but Bucky's hand closed around hers of its own volition, unexpected sensation cascading through him. It was different, the new arm; sensation didn't translate the exact same way the old one had, often a little jittery, or on a second's delay. But the touch of her skin - Bucky shivered.   
  
She stopped, looking down at him, eyes wide. Then the red mouth curved slyly, and she rubbed her thumb across the ball of his hand; stepped in closer and pressed her knee against his. Bucky licked his lips, his mouth dry. God, even through two layers of denim he could feel the heat of her. For a long few moments they stared at each other; then she tugged on his hand, pulling him to his feet.   
  
"Long day," she said. With her free hand she reached out, hesitating before she put it on his side, under his ribs. Bucky shivered again. He tangled his fingers in her long curls, feeling them silky and soft against his skin, before he cupped the back of her neck, heat and softness under his palm. Natasha smiled up at him. Then she stepped in close, slid her arms around his waist and tucked her head under his chin, the old familiar embrace. God she was so warm, strong and solid. Her shampoo was something citrusy, and her jacket still had that new leather smell. He folded his arms around her shoulders, heard her breath catch. She sighed, a low little noise, all contentment; her arms around him tightened fiercely, and he buried his face in her hair and squeezed back.

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

( _praise kink_ )

 

It's just a passing remark. Everyone's in custody who should be in custody, they're coordinating with local law enforcement, the oversight committee wants a briefing and a full report; gone are the days when Natasha walked out of a mission and left the aftermath to others. (It's kind of fun. She likes new challenges, and handling all this gives her a warm glow in the pit of her stomach: you're doing right, you're keeping your team safe, you're helping people.) Everyone's busy, and Bucky catches up to her in a quiet moment in the shadow of an ambulance: slides an arm around her waist and kisses her temple.   
  
"You were amazing in there," he says. His voice is lowered and a bit rough, warm, admiring.  
  
Unexpected happiness bubbles up in her chest. She shoves him a little, laughing, her face turned away. "Uh-huh."  
  
"I love watching you work," he says, laughing himself. "I missed it. Talk about skill."  
  
Natasha's face is hot. "It's just," she says, but the trouble is, he, of all people, knows _exactly_ what it is. She can't hide from Bucky, any more than he can from her. Her hair's coming undone, but it's still mostly pinned up, so she can't shake it over her face, and there's no pressing reason to turn away from him.   
  
Bucky touches her face, metal and the leather of his glove against her cheek. "Amazing," he says again, but his tone's turned curious and his eyes are narrowed.   
  
Natasha says, "Don't." She does what she does because she has to; she's good for one thing only, she was made that way, and the best she can do is make sure the goal she serves is a good one. She can try and make herself a better person than she was at SHIELD, but fundamentally -   
  
"Don't what?" says Bucky. "What you do, reading the whole room, wrapping people round your finger and sending them dancing off how you want, that's incredible. I always love watching it."  
  
Natasha crosses her arms over her chest; it's hollow and aching, and her face is hot. "Thanks," she says, trying to make it dry instead of inane. She feels all - quivery. Amazing, huh. Amazing. She licks her lips.  
  
He huffs. "What's it gonna take, tie you down and repeat it every ten minutes? Learn to take a compliment, Romanov." His hand's at the back of her neck, gentle, big; he leans in and kisses her, quick and hard.   
  
Her breathing's unsteady. "I can take a compliment."  
  
The grey eyes widen, cataloguing: her quick breathing, her wide eyes, her teeth in her lower lip, the slide of the muscles in her throat when she swallows, the minute sway of her body. Natasha shifts her stance, widening it so she's steadier. Of all the inappropriate -   
  
"Yeah?" Soft, rapt, his full mouth parted. He taps his thumb against her jaw very gently, and his tongue flicks out to lick his lips. "Come on. Let's get this done and go home."  
  
Another man might have said, _let's get out of here now_. Natasha smiles at him, a real honest smile; there's no one else to see.   
  
"Hey," she says.   
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"You were pretty amazing in there too."  
  
Bucky takes a surprised breath; he can't quite meet her eyes, and there's a pretty pink flush - very faint, but definitely there - on his cheekbones. "Thanks," he says.   
  
Natasha grins.

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

(under the influence)

 

"I don't think," Bucky said gleefully, "I've ever seen you drunk before." It was a bit muffled; he was kissing her neck, his big hands on her hips, holding her back against his chest while she fumbled with the keys.

"Oh I'm drunk," Natasha said, giggling stupidly. "I'm - I saw you knocking back Thor's whatever it was." God, why did she have all these key rings, where did they come from, who bought them for her. Coop and Lila - Steve - even Pepper. Impossible. How dare. With exaggerated care she separated out the front door key and fit it into the lock on the fifth try. It was odd to feel so wobbly but so good about it. She liked it, she decided. It was nice.

"Alien booze," Bucky said, snorting. "Oh boy. I haven't felt like this since before Azzano."

"Bubbly and stupid," she said. "Everything's so funny."

"It won't be in the morning." For some reason that struck her as the funniest thing she'd heard in weeks. They stumbled into the apartment, laughing like idiots, nearly forgot the key on the outside, shut the door; Bucky fell back against it, his face flushed, eyes very bright. She didn't see him like this very often, totally unguarded. Natasha pressed up against his chest, her hands on his sides, and he spread his legs for her to stand between them. She still had to hitch up on tiptoes to kiss his jaw and the soft exposed throat, the cleft in his chin.

"Feels good," she said, half a question. So stupidly good. It didn't matter a damn that she was unsteady and the world was bright and new and shiny and that she probably couldn't shoot straight right now if the world depended on it. She was with him and they were home.

"Feels really good." He sighed. "I don't think I even drank all that much."

"Steve," she said solemnly, "was not drunk."

"Steve _hates_ being properly drunk."

"Does he?"

"He likes his self-control."

"So do you..."

"Yeah, but I know how to enjoy myself." Bucky gave her a lazy, lascivious grin, and Natasha sniggered. Zero impulse control; that was being drunk, too. She undid the top two buttons of his shirt, peppering the hot exposed skin with kisses, rubbing her nose through his chest hair. He was a little sweaty, stroking her back over and over mindlessly until she wrestled the jacket off his shoulders and down his arms to his elbows. The way he arched away from the door was poetry.

"Speaking of enjoying yourself." His turn to snigger. He bit his lips, his eyes on her avid as she sank to her knees, her hands running down his chest to curl into the waistband of his slacks. Natasha narrowed her eyes: belt, button, zip. She couldn't tell any more if it was the alcohol making her warm or growing desire; unconsciously she spread her knees wider. His lovely thick thighs tensed under her hands as she looked up at him.

"Hey."

"Hi," Bucky said, grinning down at her like an idiot. It was adorable.

"You're cute when you're intoxicated." She nuzzled at his half-hard cock through his underwear, smiling, feeling him jump and grow harder.

"Cute," he said with drunken dignity, "is not the word I'm going for here."

" _Pssssht_."

He started laughing. She leaned sideways against his thigh, grinning, watching herself stroke and tease him into hardness, her red nail polish - something else she didn't often bother with - bright against the black fabric of his underwear. The floor was hard under her knees, and her face was flushed, the blood pounding through her body. He rolled his hips into her hand leisurely, freeing his arms from the jacket at the same time so he could play with her hair. Natasha leaned into the touch like a cat begging to be petted.

"Come back up here," he said, petulant, tugging on her curls.

"Shhh," she said lazily, " _no_." God, her mouth was just about watering. She was going to make Bucky lose control and come down her throat, and he'd be all flushed and shivery and sweet for her afterwards, and maybe tomorrow morning would be dire, but seriously, what did that matter now. Thinking ahead was for serious things. You grabbed hold of good moments in life and held onto them with both hands for as long as you could. Even when you knew damn well that your promised supply of them was endless, now, stretching on into the future as far as you could see it. Natasha tugged his underwear down, smiling, and set about the _very important_ business of making him moan.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

(just the tip)

"Come on," Natasha said, her voice low and slurred with sleep and painkillers. She was squirming against him sweet and eager, her bandages rough against his chest and thighs, the sharp contrast to the smooth heat of her skin winding him up higher, much the way her nails raking down his back or chest would. As she pushed back against him and wriggled his half-hard cock slid between her thighs; laughing softly she tightened them around him.

Bucky groaned into her shoulder. She was wet already, her cunt soft and swollen, her thighs hard where she was tensing her muscles. He could smell her arousal over the antisceptic on her wounds and the faint tang of sweat, and buried under the covers like this they were cocooned in hot sweet darkness, a private little world even within their own apartment. He kissed her neck, holding her still against his chest, and reminded himself firmly that the doctors had said no strenuous physical activity and that he was thirty-three and not fifteen and god almighty he wanted to roll her onto her front and slide inside her and make her scream for him.

"You're _hurt_."

"I'm _horny_. I want you, darling, go on, fuck me."

"I'm not going to make it worse," he muttered, trying to convince himself as much as her. God, her soft ass pressed against him; a little lube maybe, slick her strong thighs up and fuck them, his cock rubbing along her folds till she was desperate... He shuddered at the thought, growing fully hard between her legs, and her delighted little hum had him biting a hickey into her neck, his left hand splayed across her abdomen, feeling her flex and grind against him.

"Just the tip, then." Mischievously.

Bucky snorted. "I - seriously." He started laughing. "There's a line I haven't heard in a while."

"Have you ever used it?"

"Mmm. Don't think so." He planted his foot on the mattress and rolled his hips lazily, dragging his cock along her slit; she shuddered, her eyes falling shut.

"I could play the blushing innocent if you wanted," she murmured. "Oh no, no, it's not wrong, is it?"

Bucky grinned against her shoulder. "Of course it's not wrong, sweet girl," he coaxed. "How could something that feels this good be wrong? Aren't I making you feel good?"

"Better if you were in me," Natasha said, triumphant.

"Suckered," Bucky acknowledged. Pleasure was tensing him sweetly, running hot down his spine; he combed through her pubic hair, brushing it back to find her clit, slid two fingers along the swollen root of it, and her soft gasp went straight to his cock. She was pulling at the sheet, biting her lower lip, and when he kissed her face it was hot. "Just the tip. Never hurt you. Just a little; that won't count." As strenuous phyiscal activity. "You're so gorgeous when you come for me, I want to feel it."

"Damn!" Natasha said breathlessly. "Oh please, _please_ -"

The trouble was, Bucky was terrible at saying no to her.

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

(barebacking)

 

They've been kissing for hours, rolling around Bucky's stupidly huge bed making out like teenagers. This kind of foreplay - this drawn-out exploration of one another, this teasing - is something they've never had time for before, and Natasha's enjoying every second of it. Her shirt's vanished, her bra hanging off the edge of the mattress, the black fabric nearly invisible against the navy sheet, and she gasps a little whenever he strokes his left hand down her back. Outside there's a cheerful wind blowing - every now and then the windows rattle - and it's nearly ten o'clock: they have all the night, and all tomorrow, and all tomorrow night, and on and on and on as far into the future as Natasha can see.

Bucky has chest hair now, and when she kisses his scars he groans and arches towards her, the surrounding skin more sensitive than she remembers. His skin's so warm, his body deliciously big, his thigh between hers hard and thick. She keeps rolling her hips against it eagerly, tense pleasure running down her spine and warming her skin. She can't help blushing when he gropes her ass lazily and urges her on, aware she's wet and hot and swollen and quite possibly soaking through her jeans by now. His cock's fully hard, the fabric of his underwear damp and sticky with pre-come when she undoes his fly and gropes him, feeling the shape of him in her hands again. She laughs against his mouth when he groans, head flung back against the pillows. 

"Hmmmmm?" 

"Say when," he says, faintly hoarse. "Or if." 

Natasha laughs again, kisses the corners of his mouth and the tip of his nose. "Or if?" 

"Been a long time," Bucky points out. The way he's groping her ass is kind of undermining his noble intentions, but Natasha doesn't tell him so. 

"Not that long," she says, grinning. Sometimes he's so diffident with her; she's not sure if it's because of their history or because he's used to girls who act - who aren't - well, who are different. It's sweet because it's so unusual: she doesn't know him that way. Back Before there wasn't a scrap of hesitation in either of them. It was much too new and too delightful not to fling themselves off a cliff right away. 

"Long enough," he says. He takes his right hand off her ass and fumbles in the bedside table. Natasha tilts her head curiously, her hair hanging in his face. Bucky blows at the strands. She jumps, laughing, bends to kiss him again, his stubble rough against her lips, his mouth kiss-swollen, his vulnerable throat exposed, just for her. 

"What are you looking for," she murmurs. His left hand wriggles under the waistband of her jeans before settling against her ass again - semi-decorously still above her thin panties. Natasha pushes back against that hand, smiling as she kisses him. Out of the corner of her eye light flashes - it's not his wristwatch. 

"Ah-hah," Bucky says, holding up a handful of foil packets. 

Natasha frowns at them. 

"What?" he says. 

"Nothing." They've never used rubbers before. Of course not. It wasn't like the rooms had dispensers in the toilets. 

"Habit, I guess." Bucky shrugs one-shouldered. He looks at her quizzically. 

Natasha's still frowning at the stupid things. Hmm. She props herself on her right elbow and lets her other hand trail down his arm lazily. She kisses the corner of his mouth again, tracing veins and the cut of his muscles; takes the packets from between his fingers. "Ever gone without?" 

Bucky's left hand tightens on her ass. "Only with you." Then his mouth twists into a grin he tries to hold back, and she knows he's thinking, _that I remember_. She fixes him with a glare. He kisses her, deep and dirty, her chest flush to his, so warm, so good - soft skin and scratchy chest hair, and the rise and fall of his chest with hers. 

Natasha opens her fingers. The condoms fall to the floor, probably landing on top of his shirt. 

"No?" Bucky rolls them over easily, laying her down in the pillows; he pushes her chin up gently with his fingertip and lavishes attentions on the already-blooming hickeys on her throat and shoulders. "Good." Natasha slides her hands into his thick messy hair, her thighs spread for him to settle between them. "Wanna feel you everywhere," he tells her. "Everywhere. Just you, just your skin." 

"No," she says. "I mean yes. God. Want you to fill me up." Her face is burning, the words ridiculous in her own ears, but it's worth it: Bucky shudders all over, his breathing quick. "Make a mess of me..." 

"Fuck," he mutters. "Nat, my Nat. Anything you want..." 

"Nothing between us. Not even that." 

"I'll throw 'em all out in the morning," he promises. "Spread your legs after and see..." Bucky raises his head, flushed, wild-eyed, and grins. "Never worry about cleaning up again." And he licks his lips, slow and suggestive. 

Natasha swallows hard. "The things I wanna do to you." 

" _Oh_ , Agent _Romanov_ ," Bucky says mockingly, and laughs when she thumps him in the ribs. "Ow! I'll behave, I promise." 

"Stop being an idiot and take your pants off," she orders, grinning. 

"Take yours off," he retorts, and they're so distracted by kissing that it's another twenty minutes before they're even naked.

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

(orgasm denial)

 

Bucky had been cursing for about five straight minutes, and Natasha had noticed, amused, that he hadn't yet repeated himself. He was shaking, the sheets fisted in his hands, his cock pulsing in her fist, but he hadn't come. With carefully put-on fascination, she rolled his balls in her other hand, stroked her thumb over his cock. You couldn't quite get the romance novel descriptions out of your mind - velvet over steel, and all that.

Her touch had him moaning. "You little - Nat, come on."

"Wait for it and it'll be so much better, you said." She licked at the head of his cock, pre-come salty on her tongue, and took it in her mouth and suckled, just for a moment.

"I meant to do it to you," Bucky said, disgruntled. But then he laughed. "Natasha..."

At last she shifted onto her hands and knees, leaning over him, precisely aware of the way his thick spread thighs framed her body, of what it must look like, his cock curving up towards his stomach, her hair hanging around her face - not long enough yet to trail over his skin like this, alas. She knew he was watching her breasts sway, the curve of her hips and ass as she crawled up his body, knees at either side of his hips. His eyes were wide, watching her straighten up on her knees. His look made her breathless, set her heart pounding, made her whole body hot. He could make her feel beautiful with a sideways glance, some days. This greedy stare made her feel divine.

"Bit longer," she said.

"Fuck me," he said, grinning. "Let's see how many times you get there before I break."


	14. Chapter 14

(bondage)

 

Natasha couldn't help it - the soft ropes going round her wrists were the last straw, banked nervousness sparking up into momentary fear. She shifted, pulling her hands apart against the loops, her breathing fast and louder than before, tiny hint of panic.

Bucky's hands on her hips were steady and strong, and looking down her own body the sight of them was comforting; after a second or five her breathing evened out again. She would never, could never, mistake his touch for anyone else's. It was Bucky, behind her, above her, securing her, keeping her, holding her. It had always been Bucky.

"Hey," he said, kissing her shoulder. "You promised you'd keep still." For me.

Natasha flexed her fingers. There was just enough space between the two of them that she couldn't touch him without leaning back, without moving. But kneeling on the bed like this, naked, gagged, vulnerable, the soft rope twisted around her limbs, trailing over her skin, she thought she could feel his body heat radiating off him. Immobilised twice over, unable to see him, his hands became hot and heavy as she focussed on them, the scrape of his stubble on her shoulder unbearably harsh, the brush of his lips soft as - sin.

"Hmm? Relax, sweetheart." Bucky trailed his fingers over her hip pulled lightly at the knot nestled in the small of her back. The ropes slid over her skin, following the movement of his hand like living things, and in spite of herself she moved too, rocking on her knees minutely, her ass canting back. Not far, but far enough. Wet with her slick already, the soft cord nestled in her folds slid along them deliciously, begging her to rock again, to find a way to rub –

"That better?" Bucky's voice had a low, crooning note to it she wasn't sure she'd ever heard in it before. They'd messed around with scarves and belts before, they'd traded orders and tried positions and toys, and even as he'd laid the rope against her tonight they had laughed and teased and kissed. Now... now it coiled around her, caressed her, cradled her, close as only he could get to her, and the mood had subtly changed. She was wrapped up entirely in bonds that were beginning to feel like an extension of his very hands, soft but tightly gripping, and Natasha was beginning to suspect that, like the touch of his hands, some part of her had yearned for this.

That, more than the helplessness of her current position, terrified her a little.

Her face was hot. Slowly she nodded.

"OK." Bucky pulled at the knot again, and again the lovely slide of the cord along her cunt, the throb of arousal low in her stomach. Her thighs were tense, and she didn't know whether to be embarrassed or not by the fact that she could feel her slick trickling down them.

All she had to do was raise her hands a ways - the rope had that much give - and pull that knot he was playing with. Everything would unravel. Everything would be over.

What a waste of all that effort - the cord, the knots, the pattern, the time spent trussing her up. Natasha grinned behind the gag, and leaned back, back; her shoulders met Bucky's hot naked chest, and she spread her knees a little for better balance and tipped her head back onto his shoulder. Her body made a lovely line from her throat, invitingly exposed, to her knees; about a sixty degree angle to the mattress, she supposed. And Bucky had the best seat in the house for it, looking down over her shoulder at the ropes fanning out over her skin, her peaked nipples, her wet thighs. His breath was hot and damp on the shell of her ear when he turned his head to her.

"You," he said softly, "are stunning. Nat, that you'd give me this - it's everything. _You're_ everything."

Molten pleasure flashed up her spine and blossomed out across her body, sweet and drugging. How lovely to be free of any obligation to answer; how lovely just to bask in it. Natasha closed her eyes and relaxed, pliant and languid. When he shifted closer to her she rubbed against him like a cat. Bucky muffled his laugh in the crook of her neck and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She could feel the stretch of his smile against her skin as he suckled hickeys into her neck, and smiled herself, looking up at the darkened ceiling, intricately, irrevocably tied up in him.

 

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

(tentacles) 

 

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Bucky said. His voice had that breathless, slightly strangled quality to it that never failed to make Natasha feel smug. Cameras and bugs all turned off, doors securely locked, she wandered back to the middle of the room, stopping by the tub her no-longer-very-human boyfriend was mostly submerged in. 

From the waist up, he was entirely normal: powerful torso, dark curling chest hair, broad shoulders. His left arm shone in the lights - Natasha wished she'd thought to turn them down, but she didn't think she could walk away from him now if she tried. The smell of him was thick and tempting in her nose. Her hand was clenched tight on the rim of the tub. Neck corded with muscle, thick wet hair slicked back, long enough to curl just under his ears. Square jaw, blurred with stubble; cheekbones, nose, wide, kissable mouth, pale eyes that saw her, that had always seen her, exactly as she was. 

Bucky, in short. Below the water line, though... 

His torso sort of... melted into the tentacles, his skin colour changing in gradiations below his belly button, from a healthy slight tan to a light but dull grey. The veins stood out strongly in pure red, instead of the blue you'd expect of human blood vessels beneath human skin. She wasn't sure if he meant to move them like that, constantly shifting and twisting them so that they rippled through the water, made the surface bubble and heave. 

Natasha's mouth was dry. Hands ostentatiously steady, she undid the belt of her robe. "About three hours ago I was an actual spider. It'll be fine."

"Yeah, a poisonous one," Bucky pointed out. "Which doesn't necessarily bode well..."

He trailed off into silence when she dropped the robe. Natasha tipped her head to the side, curious: his face was flushed with more than the warmth of the water, his jaw set, and his fingers were slowly denting the rim of the tub, his arms flung wide along it. Anyone else might have called that pose showing off, but to Natasha it was vulnerability, the way he was exposing himself. 

At last she looked at the water. Oh... boy. He saw her naked most every other day, but apparently the tentacle thing was. 

Well. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, this was getting her wet. She put her hand on the rim of the tub again, steadying herself, hot all over; glancing down at her body when she swung her leg over, she saw her nipples were tight and hard. OK. OK. The water was lovely and warm. He had perfect control over the stupid tentacles, he'd dragged them back away from her and was holding them entirely still. Natasha perched on the rim of the tub, both her legs in the water. 

"Chicken," she said softly. 

Bucky was so tense he was vibrating with it. "Send Thor back to that Enchantress and make him -"

"Beat another solution out of her?" Natasha smiled. "Or you could stop being ridiculous and do what you're dying to do -"

He moved even faster like this than he normally did. The tentacles wrapped heavy around her elbows, slimmer than she'd thought, more flexible too, warm the way Bucky was always warm, the texture of the skin exactly like, well, his skin. He'd moved towards her, pushing himself away from the wall of the tub in a flowing motion that slopped water everywhere, a surge, a wave. His eyes were wide and wild. Natasha parted her lips against the tentacle that had cut off her words and licked him, slow and deliberate, tasting salt and water and something warm and sticky. Was that on the other tentacles too? She wasn't sure; they were too wet with the water.

Bucky shuddered. The tentacles around her elbows tightened and then released again, caressing her. "Don't," he said, his voice cracking. "Don't -"

"Provoke you?" Natasha nuzzled at it, the soft grey skin, the flexible responsive thing that was a part of him, feeling the sweet drag of it against her face as it cupped her jaw. It wasn't so different from the touch of his hand. It had tasted much like his cock. "I think you have to let go just a little if you want this fixed."

"Fixed," he said. Still that strangled, cracking voice. "From the second this happened the only thing I've been able to think about -" 

He just couldn't manage to finish a sentence. Too busy eating himself up with guilt and fear, poor darling. It wasn't his fault; it was the massive change to his anatomy and physicality, his hormones, his brain chemistry, everything. Natasha had been a particularly grumpy spider herself, according to Clint. (In her defence, she'd had more entertaining experiences than being a foot tall and having everyone go white to the lips at the sight of her.)

"Thor says," she said softly, "that, the kind of species you are, you need... this."

He raised his eyebrows. "I thought it was some sick Hydra joke."

"Oh no, apparently everyone's an existing species, somewhere in the galaxy." Steve for example was currently humanoid but green all over, with strange silvered patterns on his cheekbones and eyebrows. There, Bucky was distracted from himself now, quizzical and interested. Natasha - 

He wasn't that distracted. The tentacles held her firmly, and when he felt her move he grinned: sharp, and sharklike.

Natasha swallowed hard. The tentacle at her jaw slid over her skin like a fingerless hand, soft and warm, seeming almost to flow around her neck till it gripped her just at the base of her skull. Arousal unfolded low in her belly, pulsing and hot, and deliberately she parted her knees. 

Bucky looked. He was only human, after all. Ordinarily, him licking his lips like that had very high chances of leading to screaming orgasms with his head between her thighs, but apparently the tentacles were distracting. Light touch on her knees; then firmer, and Natasha watched in fascination as they flattened, widening, muscle or sinew or god knew what rippling out under the skin, the veins pulsing. Oh god, he was touching so much of her already, and yet nothing at all. She gasped. Pressure on her thighs that grew as Bucky judged what his strength was now by the way he manhandled her: grinning, Natasha tensed her thighs and locked them in place. 

"I said don't," he said softly, and oh my god, what had happened to his voice, deeper and warmer than ever before, the little croon he knew she liked now a hypnotising purr. Breathless, she let him - though, tell the truth, she had nothing to set against that inexorable pressure - spread her thighs. 

Her hands were shaking. Looking down at herself, she saw him swarm in the water between her knees, watched it boil up... Oh yes; Bucky had perfect control over those tentacles. Flattened but narrower than the two holding her legs apart, this sixth appendage licked at her from her perineum to her clit, and Natasha sagged back in that strong grip and moaned. 

Bucky laughed. "You're soaked," he said, pure male satisfaction. A little bit cruel - a little bit past control - he changed his grip on her, tipped her legs up further, her whole body suspended now by him, her hips angled just so. Natasha couldn't concentrate on all the places he was holding her. She was staring up at the ceiling, hanging limp and defenceless in that embrace, pure perverse excitement at the alienness and depravity of this clashing with the sweet knowledge that it was Bucky doing it to her. Experimentally she struggled, and when he laughed again she grinned too. Her head was supported by that tentacle, her hair hanging loose and wild down towards the floor. 

"Nice view?" she said, and jumped to hear her voice so hoarse, so - so - fuck, she was hanging suspended in midair over a hot tub containing her newly alien-ed boyfriend without a stitch of clothing on her and she was so turned on her slick was sliding down her folds towards her asshole; depraved barely covered this. Lewd, wicked, wanton. Her cunt was aching, swollen; her mouth dry, her breasts tight, her nipples hard. The cool air on her brought out goose-bumps that his hot touch intensified. 

"The best," Bucky said. That tongue-like tentacle licked at her again. Natasha twisted, moaning, lovely hot friction running along her folds, teasing her hole, kittenish touches that delicately, deliberately avoided her clit; something between being eaten out and being fingered. She had no leverage to push back, no room to move at all, this was no game where he and she could say, pull that rope and the knot comes undone, she'd never been so displayed, and fuck but this was winding her up and up and up into infinity. 

"Happy like that," he said. It wasn't really a question. 

Natasha caught her breath. "You little -"

"Beg me." 

She laughed. "Why? You know -"

"I want to hear it."

She shuddered. Then she said, "Please. Please, Bucky, I want you inside me, I want you to fuck me and make me come and fill me up, over and o- ah, oh, oh fuck -"

The echoes of her scream on the last word bounced off the ceiling; he'd made that surging motion again, thrusting so deep inside her she couldn't breathe, she was being split open, there was nothing left of her but what he wanted to use, and simultaneously, as he buried himself inside her, he swarmed over her: tentacles holding her asscheeks apart, groping her breasts, rubbing themselves over her belly and back and sides and legs and arms. Wrapping, delicate, beautiful threat, around her throat. 

Bucky was leaning up over her now, his hands on the rim of the tub below her suspended body, a little like missionary. He was gone now, over the edge, his eyes fixed on her face, his mouth curved into a greedy smile. Natasha could feel herself fluttering around him, her inner muscles gripping him, her asshole relaxing eager and easy under the wet, probing touch of another tentacle. 

"Anything you want," he said softly. That was Bucky, through the haze of alien hormones: lover, partner, best friend. For a moment they were in bed together, hidden under the covers, tangled so tightly together that no one and nothing could ever separate them again: not enemies, not time itself; only a choice neither of them would ever want to make. 

"Everything," Natasha rasped. "All of you, always."

His face was rapt. A tentacle at her lips: he tasted sweeter now, less like pre-come, and Natasha moaned helplessly around the soft malleable flesh, impaled as well as suspended, feeling her body drag at him as he left her, open eagerly to his slow push back in. Again. Again. Again; so lazy and slow it was a tease. (A tasting: drawing it out.) 

And he was caressing her all over, the tentacles that held and bound her constantly rippling over her skin, rubbing at her, over her, pleasure following the little movements in sweet waves. The tentacle in her mouth pulsed when she sucked at it, licked it, she'd never been spitroasted before, each thrust in her cunt rocked her body deliciously in the cradle he held her in, pushing her into and onto himself over and over, tension climbing up in her sweet and hot and beautiful. Yes. Oh yes. She was breathing in short little gasps, her moans choked by the tentacle in her mouth. Yes. Again, again, more. She loved him so, and she'd never been so close to him, never - 

God, she was him, a part of him, cocooned in him, swallowed up. There was barely an inch of her he wasn't touching, inside and out; slowly, slowly, as he fucked her cunt, he was teasing her ass open for him as well, the stretch and burn of it growing as he stroked inside her and expanded and then another and another and the taste of that secretion filled her mouth and she was so open and so limp and every inch of her was pleasure and need, her skin was burning with it, every time he thrust inside her she was jolted out of herself entirely, god, quicker and quicker, pounding her, using her, her body was nothing but a clumsy husk for him to fuck if it pleased him, this beauty was all she would ever need to feel again, this joy. When she opened her eyes she saw his face, and the endless glory of the universe above them both, they were so close to one another, so close, so - so - 

The universe shattered into white light and fire. Her body strained against him, convulsing, tasting him in her mouth, feeling the hot pulse of him in cunt and ass. She was spinning, dizzy, overcome. 

Gasping for breath, Natasha opened her eyes. Bucky was pulling out of her and god she was so open, dripping with him; in spite of herself she groaned and twisted and tried to reach for him. For the first time he was close enough to kiss, and the shape of his mouth and the feel of his breath on her face and the sweet familiar touch of his hands, his actual hands, actually made her come again, a sweet shivery little orgasm that rattled through her happily and left her caught between laughter and tears. 

Well. Now she knew what Thor had meant about the secretions. And the, uh, the desired services of the members of the species Bucky had been turned into. 

She couldn't hold him, he still had her immobilised. But she could kiss him back and laugh and promise him she loved him and that he'd been just perfect for her, better than she had ever imagined, and watch him flush and laugh at the praise. 

"Being inside you like that, it was." Bucky shook his head. 

"Like we were the whole universe. I was you and you were me and everything was us."

He heaved a sigh. "Yeah."

"Hey," Natasha said softly. 

"Hmm?"

"You gonna let me down?"

Bucky raised his eyebrows, grinning. "No, I think we're gonna do that again."

"Oh I'm so glad," she said, sighing for relief. "So so glad, you don't even know, oh god yes inside me -" Not a second's hesitation; she cried out when he thrust inside her ass again, and begged and writhed when he stroked her clit before he filled her cunt so perfectly. Wet obscene noises of him fucking her through his own come; a sweet building ache in her belly again, the taste of him as another tentacle nudged at her lips. Natasha opened her mouth eagerly. She would have spread her legs and held her ass open for him, but Bucky seemed to like her bound, her arms behind her back so her back was arched, her breasts presented for him to kiss and suckle and tease. 

"Shh. There. I have you, beautiful, just relax and let me do it all. We're not done yet. Not nearly done."

No, not nearly. Natasha would have grinned if she could have. As it was, she closed her eyes and wriggled against him and settled in for a gloriously long night.


	16. Chapter 16

(make up) 

The make up chest was really just a wooden box, probably out of IKEA or some such place, lidless, its contents jumbled together in amazing disarray, and coated here and there with escaped foundation powder in various shades. 

"I love watching you get ready for work," Bucky said, grinning. He remembered when these little bottles and sticks and sponges and brushes had come from a carefully-curated storeroom where Natasha had wandered the shelves with her fists on her hips, picking make-up to match her cover under the suspicious eye of the requisitions officer. 

She was wearing that self-same frown now. And she had her fists on her hips. "Count yourself lucky," she said absently. 

"Oh I do." He kissed her temple in passing, because he loved that frown so much, and went over to the mirror to fix his hair. Natasha put out a hand to caress his chest as he went past her. 

"Dark lipstick, I think," she said thoughtfully, "not too Goth, but something that suggests... teenage sulkiness. They're more likely to approach her if they think she'll be talked into something because it's cool and rebellious. Those types are easily manipulated and easily thrown away."

"Black fingernails," Bucky suggested, straight-faced.

"Maybe," she said. Rummaging noise; clatter of glass bottles and plastic. Having made her selection, she settled on the stool in front of the dresser and started with foundation; a little too pale for her skin colour. Then eyebrows, her mascara already in her other hand. Bucky pulled the other chair up to watch her, smiling. 

Natasha cut her eyes over to him, the corner of her mouth curling prettily. "Considering a career change?" 

"It's funny how it hasn't changed much," he said. "When Becca finally talked Mam into letting her wear make-up she'd go through the exact same routine. Once she stabbed herself in the eye with the mascara brush. I thought she'd go blind."

Natasha laughed. "Most of us have done that at least once."

"I guess so." Bucky smiled. "Now listen, make your mind up: d'you want me to have holes in these jeans or not?"


	17. Chapter 17

(bed-sharing)

 

This is new, Natasha thinks.

It's odd that she's only thinking this now, only realising it now: she and Bucky have been - their thing has - their relationship has been going for nearly a month. They've been dating, actual dates: Bucky keeps bringing her flowers and taking her out places and buying her little presents: books, a keychain of her own hourglass symbol, a vase for the flowers he brings her. They've made out for hours, petting and talking and teasing. They've had sex (made love?) in her bed and in his, at first sweet and slow and rapt with new-old discoveries, then wilder, pushing each other just the way they always used to, bite marks and bruises and manhandling each other, knocking lamps over and mistreating the furniture. After that first time she'd lain across the mattress, her feet tangled in the only corner of the duvet still left on the bed, and arched her sweetly aching body into a long luxurious stretch, her hands over her head, and she'd said, supremely self-satisfied, _that's everything, now_. Everything they were to each other, regained.

But this is new. She lingers by the side of the bed, wearing one of his shirts, her bruises anointed with sticky anti-swelling gel, her hair a little damp still from the shower. Savour this moment, hold it close. Bucky's in his boxers, his own bruises already faded to mottled yellow, his nose in a book, his hair falling adorably over his forehead. Her clothes are hung neatly in the bathroom, having been steamed, at least a little, by both her shower and his; it would make sense to move some of her things over here, to keep a few pairs of underwear, some pants, a shirt or three, in his closet. For him to do the same at hers.

How sensibly logical. Natasha hums, delighted with herself.

Bucky looks up at her and smiles. "You OK?"

"What are you reading?" she asks.

"Henry Miller. The Colossus of Maroussi. Picked it up in London in '44 and never got the chance to finish it."

"Oh." She smiles too. "He was -"

"A massive asshole."

Natasha laughs. "Yes. Sponging off his partners constantly."

Bucky's still smiling. "But oh boy, he could write."

At last she twitches the duvet back and climbs into the bed. Already it's warm with his body heat, the mattress so soft she sinks into it. He puts the book down and turns off the lamp, plunging them into the comfortable dimness shed by the candles on the dresser. It had been an unexpected relief to find he shared her distaste for falling asleep in the absolute dark. Such a childish thing to need, candles, nightlights, the drapes open to let in the street lights. But god knows she spent long enough in narrow windowless cells and dormitories, smothered in black, hemmed in on all sides yet completely alone.

Bucky shifts down the bed, settling into the pillows with a tiny sigh. "What a day."

"Hey," Natasha says softly.

"Hmm?"

"Never done this before."

He opens his mouth, surprised. Then he smiles. "No. Hey, you wanna be the big spoon or the little one?"

She snorts. "You are what my niece would call a massive doofus."

"The big spoon, then." Obligingly he twists about, onto his side, his back to her. She loves how big he is, and how easily he goes where she asks him to, how unconcerned he is with things that other men might have hang-ups about. _They all seem pretty pathetic now_ , he said to her once. _The things I used to worry about_. This includes points as disparate as his total inability to put up a stable piece of shelving - carpentry is not her darling's strong point, much to Clint's amusement - and his appreciation of good-looking men in tight trousers.

Natasha lays her arm over his waist - rubs her hand teasingly through his happy trail - and tangles their legs together. He's very warm, his skin soft, his breathing slowing down. She could put her hand up and cover his heart, feel the steady beat of it. _thu-thum. thu-thum. thu-thum_. Bucky Barnes, asleep in her arms. Impulse pushes her up on her elbow; she leans over and brushes a kiss across his shoulder, across the uneven welding between the old socket and the new arm, another scar to flaunt: not broken yet.

"Love you," Bucky says sleepily.

"Good night," she whispers. It's the same thing.

In the morning he's sprawled on his front with his face marked with pillow-creases, and she's lying on his back, half her hair caught in the rills of his shoulder and his ass pressed snug against her groin. Natasha frees her hair, laughing, then worms her hands underneath his hips and into his boxers, and Bucky groans contentedly into the pillows and promises to make her breakfast.

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

(miscommunication)

 

"I cannot believe this is actually happening," Bucky muttered. "No, I can. I just don't want to."

"What did you think I said, anyway?" Natasha said. She was poking and twisting at her malfunctioning comm piece, which, every now and then, gave off an angry electronic hissing noise and once actually shot out sparks.

"Guerilla," said Bucky gloomily. "G _ue_ rilla. Which would've made marginally more sense, under the circumstances." Only marginally, mind you, but still. There was no way anyone could blame him for mishearing that. Anyone would have misheard that.

On the ground some twenty feet below the branches of the obliging old oak they were - securely if somewhat uncomfortably - sheltering in, the gorilla crashed across the clearing, howling. It had lost the machine gun at some point, but the ammo belt was still slung across its body, and it wasn't moving the way a gorilla should - it was stumbling and shambling on its hind legs like a human, instead of using all four limbs.

About half a minute after it had run past their tree, it ran back again in the direction it had come from. It hadn't given up howling. You could probably hear it for miles.

Bucky would feel more sorry for the poor dumb beast if his ass weren't numb with sitting on this stupid branch. And also if he and Nat were back in the safehouse already, maybe in the bath together, her dreamy smile when she pulled him about till she had him arranged how she wanted him, and her strong hands massaging shampoo into his hair...

Madly yelling, the gorilla burst out into the clearing again, circled their tree twice, and bolted off once more. Bucky heaved a sigh. Honestly, he'd had a lovely little welcome set up for the non-existent guerillas. Not a one of them would have died or anything. It had practically been art.

"Maybe it's the full moon," Natasha said. He could hear the grin in her voice. Fondly she poked the toe of her boot into his shoulder. Bucky craned his head back to look up at her. She was folded into the fork of two huge broad branches that arched up and away from each other into the darkness, and somewhere behind and above her right shoulder Bucky thought he saw the flash of a squirrel bolting through the tree.

"Were-gorillas," he said.

Natasha made the face she always made when they weren't alone, or on the job, and he had said something that made her want to giggle. (Not, of course, that she ever giggled. It was just, you know, a sort of, of, happy little hiccough.) "I had such plans for that massive bathtub," she said.

"Great minds."

She blew him a kiss. Somewhere off in the forest, the gorilla let out a particularly loud shriek, and a great cracking and rustling filled the air, as if it had run into a tree and knocked it over.

Seriously. The first time in his life that Bucky had ever actually _wished_ for guerillas.

Natasha heaved a sigh. "If Steve ever finds out about this -"

"Don't I know it," Bucky said, more gloomily than ever.

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

( _oral sex_ )

 

Here's the thing: Bucky _loves_ giving head. He arrived at this conclusion at the age of eighteen - or was it nineteen? - under the enthusiastic guiding hands of Faye Perry, a couple years older than he was, incredibly intelligent and incredibly bored; when he met her again a few years later she'd joined the Communist Party, published a book, had hung out with the Romillys - not that that meant anything to Bucky at the time - and spent the evening slandering Salvador Dali's character and works to a highly indignant Steve, and then the rest of the night congratulating Bucky on not having forgotten her instructions in the meantime.   
  
Anyway. Enough about Faye Perry. The point is, he loves giving head. The smell of a girl, the heat of her skin and the taste of her slick; the intimacy of it, how exposing it is. The noises she might make, and the soft thighs around his head or over his shoulders; the weight and balance of her kneeling over his face. The warm shivery sense of pride he gets in seeing her gasping and red-faced and languid with pleasure afterwards. It's a skill, getting a girl to look like that, in Bucky's - admittedly rather smug - opinion, and once Bucky Barnes sets himself to learning a skill he doesn't give up till he's perfect at it.   
  
So on the whole, it's a shock to him when Natasha says she doesn't like it.   
  
"Listen to you," she says, laughing - an open, happy, delighted sound she'd never make in public. "Rhapsodising about your talented tongue. God. Just like a man!" She sniggers, pulling herself up on her elbows to sprawl in a sitting position against the pillows. The cool air peaks her nipples temptingly, but Bucky's kneeling between her legs still and he can feel himself getting less turned on by the second.  
  
"But it _is_ ," he says, hugely offended. "Talented, I mean. I mean, not to boast, but nobody has ever said..." But that's a possibility too horrible to contemplate.   
  
Natasha sobers, but it's a massive effort on her part. "I didn't mean to cast aspersions," she says, trying to keep her voice solemn. Her eyes are dancing, and her mouth is tight. "I just don't enjoy it."   
  
"Well," says Bucky. "This is, uh, different." He chews on his bottom lip. "OK."  
  
"I don't mind giving you a blowjob," Natasha says.   
  
Bucky snorts. He's momentarily distracted by the way his phone screen lights up on the bedside table, or he would have realised sooner that the little movement she makes then is a flinch. But it's a message, not a call, so it can't be anything important. "Oh the enthusiasm. No I don't want a blowjob. I want you to sit on my face."   
  
Her mouth's doing something odd; it trembles, and then sets firmly, and with a shock Bucky realises she's not amused any more. "Too bad. You _all_ think you're geniuses at it, and what it mostly is is wet and uncomfortable and faked orgasms just to -"  
  
"Get it over with?" Bucky says dangerously.   
  
Natasha crosses her arms over her chest. This has the not-at-all-coincidental effect of hiding her breasts from him.   
  
"Because," he goes on, suppressing an incongruous and entirely un-modern urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her, Humphrey Bogart-like, "if you're telling me there's been a single second where you thought _better get this over with_ , instead of telling me -"  
  
"There you go again," she says. "You, you, you. Haven't I _just_ told you what I like and what I don't?"  
  
That's true. Bucky stops, mouth parted like an idiot; she kicks at him accidentally as she scrambles up and off the bed, and grabs the discarded sheet off the floor to wrap around herself - it's the closest thing to hand.  
  
"You know how much it cost me to get to the point where I even _knew_ what I wanted? You know how hard it is to get over that voice in the back of your head that treats every little interaction with other human beings as a mission? That voice constantly going, don't tell him anything true about yourself, he'll use it against you? Get over yourself, Barnes."  
  
The scorn in her voice is more cutting than the slam of the bedroom door behind her.   
  
Irrelevantly, he thinks, _it's true. I've never given her head_. There was never any time; so many of their trysts were desperate fumbles in dark corners, fingers and frotting against each other. Looking back he's not sure they ever risked penetrative sex more than once or twice - but of course, his memory's not the best.   
  
His knees are stiff when he gets off the bed and goes to find her. She's in the kitchen, making herself coffee, the sheet clutched close to her, her red hair bright in the overhead light.   
  
Bucky says, "I'm sorry."  
  
Natasha glances at him. "It's all right."  
  
"Not really."  
  
"I have a list of hang-ups longer than the Amazon river." She won't really look at him, bashing coffee mugs around and fiddling with the sugar she only takes in tea and espresso.   
  
"The idea that I might ever have done something you didn't want kills me," he says. "Straight back to Odessa, I guess. I'm sorry. I know you never lie to me." After a second, he adds, "And yeah, OK, I have an ego too."  
  
Her hands fall still at last. Natasha clenches them briefly before she turns to look at him. "I don't mind trying," she says.   
  
Bucky shakes his head, but she raises her hand to silence him. "I don't mind," she repeats. "Everything's different with you."   
  
"I love you," Bucky says.   
  
"Well," Natasha says, caustic. "That makes everything all right then, doesn't it." But she comes into his arms unhesitating, and buries her face in his chest.   
  
Bucky kisses her hair. "Seems like a good place to start, yeah."  
  
"In your vast personal experience."  
  
He grins. "Never really been in love before."  
  
Her breath catches. Then she laughs, soft and sweet, and holds him even closer. They leave the coffee to get cold.

 

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

(lateness)

 

This was not how the day had been supposed to go.   
  
Natasha had spent the last twelve hours feeling like several proverbial animals - headless chickens; blue-arsed flies - and having at last escaped the _utter shambles_ Stark and Steve had made of _everything_ (bitterly she thought, _as per usual_ , and then squashed it, because once she got onto that the next logical question was _why are you still here then_ , and the only answer to that in turn involved admitting to herself that she was a total fucking moron who couldn't get out from under the weight of her own issues), she found herself with a sliver of hope, a tiny, tiny sliver of hope that she might yet make it, that she was not too late -   
  
She was too late. Half the subway trains in the city were cancelled and the island of Manhattan was a gridlock of hooting, shouting taxicabs. Natasha made it home ten minutes after the appointed hour, having moved on, by now, to feeling like the White Rabbit and stumbled into the elevator of her building feeling vaguely sick and thoroughly angry at herself.   
  
_I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date_. This was not how today had been supposed to go. She was supposed to be in the back of a taxi by now, showered and clean and smelling sweet, her hair carefully styled, her dress impeccable, being escorted to the theatre by a handsome man who had once loved her, and might, one day, come back to that point of view...  
  
If she was lucky. If it wasn't too late. If fate decided she had earnt him, in the meantime.   
  
If she could manage to make a date with him and keep it, instead of standing him up like a workaholic asshole with terrible priorities. Natasha sighed. The elevator doors opened; she came out into the hall hoping fervently that she would not be seen by any stray neighbours. She had no energy just now for talk... Rounding the corner, she actually put her hand on the wall to steady herself, and -   
  
Well. Here was a vision. Bucky had just rung her doorbell; he glanced round when he caught movement in his peripheral vision, and then stopped and turned, and they both stood staring at each other like idiots from opposite ends of the corridor. Oh god, he was gorgeous. The navy suit fitted him perfectly, he'd flattened and combed and creamed his thick, untidy hair into perfect order, and, far from shaving, had let a neat, close-cropped beard grow through which Natasha had a desperate urge to run her fingers. The only drawback to it was the way it hid that lush, wide, pink mouth. His lovely eyes were wide with surprise and, for once, more blue than grey.   
  
Natasha's breath caught in her throat. Her heart was hammering at her somewhere around that region, too.   
  
"Uh," said Bucky. "Sorry I'm late?" He held out the bouquet of roses to her with a silly little flourish that Natasha smiled at tiredly. She took the roses from him and buried her face in them at once, the soft red petals brushing her nose and chin, the heady smell delicious.   
  
"They're beautiful," she said. "Thank you. Uh, didn't you get my message?"  
  
"No," Bucky said. She peered up at him worriedly from behind the roses, trying to catch any hint of anger, but he both looked and sounded enormously amused. "No messages."  
  
Natasha groaned. "I'm really, really sorry."   
  
"It happens," he said.   
  
"No, it's not OK."  
  
"I wasn't expecting dating a superhero to be easy, you know, on an organisational level."  
  
She snorted. "Organisational level."   
  
He still, apparently, thought the whole thing was incredibly funny. His mouth was soft and his eyes were gleaming. "If you want to know the truth," he said solemnly, "you're intimidatingly perfect."  
  
Natasha was tempted to hit him with the bouquet, but no one had ever brought her flowers before, and they were particularly gorgeous ones besides, so she didn't. "Stop doing that."  
  
He laughed. "When you smile I'll stop trying to make you."  
  
She did it, god help her: she was weak and tired and out of sorts and had already resigned herself to not seeing him for days and also, because pessimism was a protection she was too scared to give up, to his disappointment and annoyance when she did see him, so now she cradled her flowers in her arm and gave him what he wanted: she let herself laugh.   
  
"That's better," Bucky said, pleased. He was a bit of a performer, wasn't he. Just as she was. Had he been as nervous as she had been about tonight? Had he looked forward to it, planned every second of it a thousand different times, worried about his clothes, the flowers, the words he'd greet her with?  
  
Maybe it was a bit of a blessing in disguise, this being late. Natasha didn't try hiding her smile.   
  
"Since you're here," she said, "can I at least offer you..." She trailed off. "I don't know. I don't actually know what's in the kitchen."  
  
"Well, you shower, I'll run down to the store..."  
  
"In a three-piece suit on a Friday evening," she teased.   
  
"Was a time," Bucky pointed out dryly, "that I did _everything_ in three-piece suits."  
  
"Is there a hat to go with it?"  
  
He looked distinctly shifty. "What's it to you?"  
  
Oh yes, a consummate performer. Natasha hid her smile in her roses. "I'd like to see. You know, your natural element."  
  
"Far from that," he said. "Trousers all cut too tight, underwear completely scandalous."  
  
"Suspenders?" she said suspiciously.  
  
"Wouldn't you like to know."  
  
Natasha laughed again, and Bucky touched her elbow gently - a fleeting touch, falling away almost as soon as she felt it. But suddenly she remembered she was standing very close to him, her head tipped back to look into his face, and that - that -   
  
Her face was burning. His eyes were soft with something hopeful and yearning.   
  
"Come on," he said quietly. "I'm fifteen minutes late to pick you up, and now we've missed our show; let me make you dinner as an apology."  
  
"You have nothing to apologise for," Natasha said, unaware until she'd said the words of all the shades of meaning she had given them, and then she went up on tiptoes and kissed him, a sweet smiling gentle kiss. Being too late for a dinner engagement was excusable; being too late for - everything else - was not.  
  
The roses looked somewhat crushed by the time they made their way into a vase on Natasha's dining table, but after all, they had been sacrificed to a worthy cause. And she didn't even mind the beard-burn.

 

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

( _fake relationship_ )

 

Natasha had built their cover identities with characteristic attention to detail. Everything from the story of their first meeting to their character traits and speech patterns had been plotted out meticulously. Looking through her compliations of the Badinters' invented lives Bucky had joked that she would make a pretty good novelist. He expected that much of this detail was for _his_ benefit: as with most skils, the more practice you had, the easier it was to improvise, and god knew he didn't have much practice at this.   
  
He wasn't complaining. He'd asked her to teach him this, had examined his options and decided that manipulating people into doing what he wanted them to was preferable to punching them. So far, he was having fun with it. The Badinters were a quiet young couple. They were friendly enough, but not overly so, rather reserved - the kind of people who gave the impression of being nice, but kind of shy. This had the advantage of cutting down on the fake PDA, keeping changes to their behaviour and body language to a minimum.   
  
Still: Natasha would hook her arm through his walking down the street, kiss his cheek when they parted, squeeze his hand from time to time. For the most part, Bucky could hold those things at arm's length, see them for fakes: just as with the occasional endearment she let slip, the grin she gave him when he called her sweetheart in company. The warmth of her body next to his in the bed at night was unavoidable; so were the glimpses he might catch of her naked body when they dressed or undressed in the bedroom.   
  
But the way she smiled at him sometimes, waking up in the mornings; the way she caught his gaze and held it across a crowded room; the way she sat next to him in silence in the evenings, both of them reading a book - those things, somehow, were not at arm's length, and did not feel like an act or a lie, and for a few sweet minutes Bucky would hope, and think, _when this is over_ , and the little smile that softened her mouth would promise him that she was thinking the same thing.

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

 ( _undressing_ )

 

 

"I can manage," Bucky said. This was both sulky and a blatant lie: his left hand was still twitching every now and then, in spite of Lang's help, and his right was slathered in burn cream and swathed in bandages which he had strict instructions - from Steve, the fucking hypocrite - not to remove for another two hours at least.

"Don't be childish," Natasha said. Her tone hovered between gentle and gently amused. Having gotten him onto the couch she put out a hand and touched his face with her fingertips, thumb brushing his lips: the old familiar fleeting caress, as if reminding herself. She knelt and unlaced his boots slowly, pulling the laces much looser than they strictly needed to be to get them off, and threw his socks into a corner where someone would trip over them tomorrow morning. Bucky thought about complaining for all of two seconds. Natasha was compulsively untidy because she'd gone so long without a place or possessions of her own; Bucky knew he was compulsively tidy because messes reminded him, ridiculously but inescapably, of battlefields.

The wooden floor was cool under his bare feet, a little sticky and hot - it had been a long day. Natasha turned the lights out as they walked into the bedroom, pulled him about by the belt. Bucky kissed the top of her head, laughing tiredly.

"Shush, you." Carefully she unbuckled the shoulder holster and hung it over the chair by his side of the bed. Cool deft hands relieved him of his two hidden knives, and then tugged the woollen sweater up to his armpits, urged his arms over his head. His left hand spasmed again, and Bucky cursed at it, clumsily throwing the sweater away and attacking the buttons of his shirt, but his fingers were hopelessly clumsy and his arms were heavy as lead.

"I said stop that."

She hadn't, but he did anyway. There was a little crease between her eyebrows and her mouth was pursed. Natasha blinked a few times, swayed; sometimes, when she was this tired, she looked even younger than she usually did, and Bucky would think of the cocky, cheerful boy who'd died the day the draft letter came and wonder if that stupid kid would have loved the girl she'd been, or might have been.

There were never any certainties with Nat, except one: the present. She was where she chose to be, and she did what she chose to do.

Her hands stroked his arms, soft soothing touches as she skimmed the shirt off his shoulders, folded the burnt right cuff into the middle of the bundle she made of it. Leather belt hissing through loops; the soft noise of a button slipping free, zipper sliding down. Falling away, the fabric revealed a rainbow of bruises on his right thigh, already yellowing. Again that quick touch, to his leg this time: brief but never uncertain.

"Thanks," Bucky said quietly, stepping out of his pants.

She pushed him gently backwards. "You're welcome. Go to bed."

"May I clean my teeth first, please?"

Natasha laughed, flapping her hand in the direction of the bathroom door, and Bucky leaned in and kissed her temple.

 

 

 


	23. Chapter 23

(cuddlefucking)

 

They've been making out for hours, it must be nearly noon by now. Yesterday the weather forecast promised bitter cold and miles of snow, and every now and then a draught sneaks its way in and brushes over some inch of exposed skin. The apartment is utterly silent, heated, insulated, stocked with everything you might need to get through the average New York snowstorm, unless it turns _really_ nasty.

And in the bedroom there's a lovely hot cocoon of quilts and duvets and blankets, the weight of them pressing down on Natasha beautifully. Half of them were presents from Bucky; come autumn, he started buying her soft snuggly blankets the way other men buy their girlfriends flowers, remembering freezing concrete and the fog of her breath in the training halls where they tested each other. In return Natasha experiments with endless different hot drinks and bouillons and soups, refuses to flinch if his left hand grows cold.

She's never sat through a New York winter; she's never, since defecting, sat through anywhere's winter. There was always a good reason to skip off to some other part of the world, to warmer climes. Outright tropical or just rainy and glum, Natasha was never picky, so long as there was no chance of snow.

Yet here she is. Disgusting. The things you do for love. She's tucked tight against Bucky's chest, his right arm under her head; his chest hair tickles her breasts if they move against each other, and his left hand smoothes down her back over and over, brushes her hip and thigh. She's breathing quick. Her mouth is swollen with kissing him, being kissed. One of her hands is tucked against his neck, under his jaw; with the other she touches his face, feeling the scrape of stubble against her fingertips.

There's a sweet hollowness in her chest, a shiver in her limbs. Electricity sparks up if he moves his hand near her ass, making her laugh, and he'll shake his head and kiss her again, biting, fierce. She's wet for him, slick and swollen, hot, open. His hard cock is trapped between their bodies, pre-come sticky on her abs; she feels him pulse, rock his hips. There's an answering throb deep inside her, her cunt fluttering around nothing.

It's a game now, they've spun it out too long, who breaks first loses. Natasha wants to press her legs together, slide her hand between them; she can't keep the silly grin off her face, even through his kisses, amusement and spun-out arousal and lovely hot pleasure. Bucky's grinning too, holding her closer. He Frenches her, teasing licks into her mouth, and Natasha suckles on his tongue, makes him shudder and moan. Vengeance: the metal fingers curl into her hair, urge her head back with little coaxing tugs till her throat's exposed, _that_ spot above her collar-bone open to attack, and she twists and pushes at him, swallowing laughter, her skin tingling and her face hot.

Half on her back now, the angle's just right. She's squirmed and he's moved up and forwards; his cock rubs along her wet labia, heaven. Natasha's head falls back again, her teeth in her lower lip, dull little pain counterpoint to that sweet friction. Bucky's breathing hard. Neither of them speak. The silence is too absolute, the atmosphere outside, that winter heaviness of new-fallen and still falling snow, somehow seeping into their home. It's good though. For the first time in forever it's winter wonderland, not blue lips and black fingertips. He rocks against her, smiling down into her face. She grips the nape of his neck, gets lost in his grey eyes.

Neither of them is going to break so far as to put a hand down between them and guide his cock inside her. He frowns, concentrating, spreads his knee, forcing her legs further apart for him; then leans down to kiss her again. She's still laughing silently, sweetly passive, he's leaning awkwardly on his right elbow, that forearm under her head. When he grips her ass in his left hand and lifts her how he wants her it shocks a gasp out of her. Natasha wraps her arms around him, arching up into him; lovely, lovely, he's so big and so hot and fills her just right, just perfect. She'd wrap her legs around his waist but, frankly, the covers are too heavy. Bucky stretches out above her, no leverage for thrusts at all, his elbows digging into the mattress at either side of her shoulders, and like this she's touching him, pressed against him, from her nose to her toes.

He nudges it - her nose that is - with his. She sighs happily, kisses that lush swollen mouth again. It's so perfectly kissable, she doesn't know how she ever stops. The heavy tangle of covers holding them down is hot enough that she imagines them melting into each other, formless things knowing nothing but touch. Bucky sighs too, soft and sweet; he kisses the corners of her mouth, the pout of her lower lip, humming; then rocks his hips, an incremental thrust. Natasha shudders, pulls him closer.

Neither of them is going to break so far as to hurry this along. And maybe, she thinks, maybe they should book a flight tomorrow. She's fairly sure neither of them have ever been to the Caribbean.

 

 

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

(heat)

 

Natasha stank; every time she turned her head she could smell her own sweat, and the only comfort was that nobody else was in any better state. Her underwear clung wetly to her body, and her uniform was no better, the strip of cloth underneath the belts of her holsters soaked. The fight had been brief, but in these temperatures that was more than enough. Leaving the shadow of the building, the sun battered down on her, and the air would have been hard enough to breathe even without the dust.   
  
Bucky had wrapped a scarf around the lower half of his face before the fight had started, the dark material uncomfortably reminiscent of the Winter Soldier's mask. Above the folds of it his eyes were reddened with dust and sand. Natasha thought, amused, that he was getting a sunburn. Safely on the other side of the street, she ducked into the outbuilding with him. He went straight to the crate of mineral water; it would be warm, but that didn't matter.   
  
"Terrible weather," she said.  
  
He hummed, tugging the scarf down and handing her a bottle. "Says the girl who hates snow."  
  
Natasha smiled. "I'm very hard to please."  
  
Bucky laughed. "As long as someone else makes you breakfast and no one rearranges your books by mistake -"  
  
"You knew exactly!"  
  
"I said I was sorry." He pulled a face, drinking the water, and so did Natasha a second later, but she gulped it all the same, probably too quickly. Outside she heard the rumble of the trucks pulling out, here and there the local policemen arguing or chatting; Steve's voice, stumbling through terribly-pronounced Arabic, and then a burst of laughter. Natasha smiled.   
  
"Hey," Bucky said.   
  
"Hmm?" She glanced back at him; he'd unearthed a sun hat from one of the shelves, a horrible khaki-coloured floppy thing, and dropped it on her head with a flourish.   
  
"You're getting a sunburn."  
  
"So are you," Natasha said, laughing. God, it was too disgustingly hot even to enjoy kissing him. Never mind. They had a pretty snazzy hotel room.

 

 

 


End file.
